


umbral pyriscence

by iniquiticity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: ...and there was only one bed, Family Issues, Found Family, High-Int-Low-Wis Wizards, Isolation, M/M, Men Who Don't Understand Feelings, Names and Their Meaning, Pining, The Difference Between Us is Thinner Than A Razor, Wise Marion Lavorre, oh god they were roommates
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-06
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:41:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 26,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23507794
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: pyriscence(noun): a type of plant reproduction where seeds are released and begin to germinate only after being exposed to fire.After things go wrong in Rosohna, Essek becomes a non-person to the home and family he grew up in. As he contemplates his new life without a surname, the Mighty Nein suggest to him that maybe that doesn't need to be the case. Maybe, with the help of a red-haired wizard, he can come around to something new.
Relationships: Essek Thelyss/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 58
Kudos: 500





	1. becoming a non-person

**Author's Note:**

> thanks to the very lovely and wonderful cranes for putting the prompt which inspired this story onto my dash. many thanks, also, to darya, my incredible beta, who made this fic much better than it was. this fic contains spoilers up to episode 99.
> 
> there's a POV switch between the first part of the story and the rest of it as we meet our central character, just so you're prepared for that.
> 
> do you want to talk about critical role with me? i want to talk about it with you! i can be reached on tumblr at [iniquiticity](http://iniquiticity.tumblr.com), or on twitter at [@iniquiticity](https://twitter.com/iniquiticity)

After the negotiations finished, the peace brought a strange, impossible silence. They stood there for a while. 

Beauregard said: _There is no way this is the end. We’re loose ends. You’re a loose end, Essek._ Caleb had nodded and Essek had nodded and Essek had said _Jester can send me messages. If I do not respond, assume there is some trouble ongoing._

Caleb had said: _You are still one of us._

Essek had smiled. These strange adventurers that were his friends.

After that the Mighty Nein went. To the volcano. On a good number of adventures. And then, Nicodramas, and then, not sure of what to do next, back to the Blooming Grove, to see how it fared. There were good days, a few of them, with Caduceus’ family, working on the repair of the place. The Wildmother’s victory over the curse of the Savalirwood was evident in places. 

They had a few investigations, about the fanes of Tharizdun, to do. That was next.

Today they were going back to the Dynasty, for a day or two of rest, and then back on the road. There were hugs, and then Caleb was outside, drawing sigil in the dirt. 

“Essek!” Jester said, as she often did, these days, “We’re coming to Rosohna and you’re going to have dinner with us! Or else! Beau got a magic stick! We killed a massive giant ant with—”

Then, so soft Jester could only hear because it was magic, prickling at the back of her neck –

_Don’t go. Help. The Bloodroot Tree in the Savalirwood. Please._

There was a pause. She made a face that Beauregard noticed. Beauregard said, “Is Essek OK?”

Instead of answering, Jester ran inside the building with Beauregard following, and then Fjord, and then, noticing the commotion, Veth.

“Caduceus, do you know where the Bloodroot Tree is? Because Essek is there and he sounds in trouble and he said not to go to Rosohna and – “

“Caleb’s making the thing right now,” Veth interrupted.

“What did Essek say?” Fjord said, looking back at Jester, and then at Caduceus, who was making a face that suggested that he not only knew what the Bloodroot Tree was, but it was not friendly.

“He said ‘Don’t go. Help. At the Bloodroot Tree. Please.” She looked at Beau, and then Fjord, and then Veth, who was running out to update Caleb and Yasha, who was pressing flowers into her book.

Caduceus had put the tea down and was already setting up the scrying ritual. The hands of the Wildmother touched him, took him through the dark trees and the curses of the woods and –

_– A group of drow in their segmented armor. They stood in two lines in formation at the end of those lines - a strangely small black tree with red roots, and from the leafless branches hug tiny red fruits like cherries, and at the base of the tree was Essek, and he was manacled and stripped of the mantle and put in rags instead and standing on his own two feet, blindfolded and gagged._

_Next to him a female drow, in an elaborate robe, and at her throat the symbol of the Luxon, and she speaking in a language Caduceus did not understand, but she pointed viciously at Essek –_

“He’s being punished for something. He’s blindfolded and manacled.” he said, once he came back, and they were all looking at him, Caleb and Yasha and Veth included, “The Bloodroot Tree is …. not good. My aunt thought it was the source of the curse.”

“We have to rescue Essek!” Jester said, and there were a lot of nods, “Then he can become a member of the Mighty Nein!”

“That will make us actually nine, if you count Frumpkin,” Veth said.

“We’re already nine, with Frumpkin and Sprinkle,” Jester retorted.

“Sprinkle does not count,” Fjord added, “Weasel bones are not a person.”

“Walk and talk,” Caleb said, his face even paler than usual, “Lead the way, Caduceus.”

Caduceus lead. Jester brought the Traveler’s cloak around them to quiet their steps, and they merged into the blackened wood. They weren’t sure if the Bloodroot Tree wasn’t far orif something in the wood shifted around to assist them but it seemed like Caduceus stopped too soon, frowning.

“Listen,” he said, softly, and their ears all began to perk up and they heard what must have been undercommon. Beauregard’s eyes went wide, and she nodded, and nodded, and the frown on her face got deeper and deeper.

“He’s convicted of heresy,” she said, “To which the sentence is, uh - _ah’ilzara_ \- I don’t know what that is - and unconsecuted death. If you don’t buy into the religion, you don’t get the perks.”

Jester made a sharp noise and then covered her mouth with her hands. Her eyes were wide.

“No one is going to kill Essek other than us,” Veth said, already loading her crossbow and pulling her hood over her head, tucking her ears into it.

“I don’t --” Fjord began, but Caduceus just put a hand on his shoulder, and he stopped.

They shifted closer. A clearing, loosely defined, was coming into view. Tall trees shaded it, and then under a high canopy was a smaller tree, red and black and unsettling. There were maybe a dozen drow in their insectoid armor, and in the middle another drow with his knees in the mud, hands shackled and enclosed in some kind of mechanism behind his back. The manacles were locked to his neck by a chain and a dirty blindfold was wrapped around the back of his head. Caduceus could pick out the bits of red in the shock of his limp white hair. His clothes - prisoner’s rags, for sure - were dirty, and his head was bowed into his bent knees, so close that his nose almost touched the ground.

Next to him was a female drow, wearing an elaborate robe embroidered everywhere with the duodecahedron they knew well. In her hand she was holding a long glaive, made of some sort of black material inset with silver. Attached was a massive blade, carved with runes.

“I don’t relish this fight,” Caleb whispered, “We only need a distraction and then we can return back to the cemetery.”

Caduceus hmm’d. “Graveyard. Perhaps we could bring them somewhere else.”

“We could just go into Shady Creek Run?” Yasha asked. “Isn’t that what the city is called?”

“Wasn’t there like a brothel or an inn we stayed at without anyone who wanted to kill us?” Beauregard made a thinking face. “Or we could try to find Keg?“

"Make a distraction, then grab Essek and bring him to the brothel. Maybe find Keg.” Veth said, “This is our best plan yet.”

“Is it distracting time yet?” Fjord asked. The priestess was touching the edge of the huge glaive.

“It is rescuing time, yes,” Caleb said.

Fjord stood, trying to keep himself into still in the heavy brush. He reached out into the air and found the seam between the planes and felt the Wildmother’s hand, warm on his, and tore.

“B̶̢̡̥͓̯̫͉͈͔͂̅͑̅̅͑̉̏͌͘͜͜ą̵̛̳̱̖̝͎̜̙̳̖̹̪͖̇̒͐̏̏̄̔̔͝r̴̛̜͈͍̩͋̎̃̎͒̂͘l̵̡̢̢͙̞̖̪̱͕̘͍͕̼̣̓̊̍̉͒̌̕͜͝ǧ̵͍̞̥̪̫͚͎̭̠̥̳ͅű̴̱̹̣̼ŗ̷̜͓͖͍̹̯̯̞͍̉ą̵̛̰̠͉̘̩̘͌̅͆̑̅̉̈͆̈́ͅ,” he said, the rumble of it twisting through reality. Every drow looked over, including Essek, despite his blindfold.

Quite suddenly, falling from the sky above the priestess was a large, greenish ape-beast. The thing missed her, but it reached for the glaive and roared, and every one of the soldiers drew weapons. The fruits on the tree began to swell and drop. An intense smell of iron filled the air.

“Distracted!” Fjord said, “Also I do not want to find out why it is called the Bloodroot Tree, so let’s go. Maybe now, maybe sooner!”

Jester took a breath and touched the symbol at her hip and she was there, next to Essek, who was trying to put himself into a sitting position and looking desperately in the direction of the roaring and the slashing.

One of the fruits fell next to them and split open with a wet noise. The fruit was blood-red and juicy, and some of the juice splashed on Jester. It was unpleasantly warm and smelled like iron.

“Over here, Essek!” she said, taking Essek’s hands. “Wow, it’s a really good thing I said we were coming, and also, this tree juice is kind of gross.”

There was a choked laugh. A tear slid down his face, and then he made a surprised noise - a sort of muffled _Ulp!_ – as Jester picked him up and slung him, manacles, blindfold, gag and all, over her shoulder. Another press of magic and they were among the group again and running, and behind them was the shouting of drow and the roars of the barlgura. 

A lot of running. A few punched drow. Caleb threw up his hands, disguising Essek on Jester’s shoulder. This was pretty good, because the priestess and the rest of the drow certainly caused a stir appearing behind them on the outskirts of the city. Enough of a stir, they hoped, for them to disappear into the crowd, after doubling back a few times.

Jester, Caleb, Yasha, and their disguised drow got to the Landlocked Lady first.

"What the heck is that bag?” said the innkeeper, but Caleb reached into his pocket and dumped a good number of coins on the counter, which seemed to do a very good job answering the question. 

“Thank you,” was the first thing Essek said, once they got the gag out of his mouth. The blindfold next, and he blinked hard, squeezing his eyes shut against the bright daylight leaking in through the window. Rescued. They had rescued him. They had appeared exactly at the moment he needed and dragged him off. “That would have been the end, if not for you."

“We weren’t even that far away!” Jester replied, bright, “The Traveller was looking out for you. He didn’t want you to die.”

“I think I am going to become a convert to his faith, at this point.” Essek said, and grimaced. Nothing had ever seemed like a god had reached out and rescued him. A living plaything was better than dead.

Jester’s eyes lit up. She was about to start - a proselytizing speech, no doubt - before there was a knock and a voice.

“It’s Beau and Veth,” Beauregard's voice said, and Caleb opened the door.

“Beau!” Jester said, when they appeared, “Essek is going to convert to the Traveller because he saved his life!”

“Caleb,” Essek said, disregarding the conversation Jester and Beauregard were having about faith and conversion, “Thank you.”

“What was that about?” Beauregard asked, finally turning to him, “Assembly finally try to tie you up?” 

He knew he had never been so ragged before, in front of them. He felt naked without his mantle, without his jewelry. Instead he had rags, blood caked into his hair, bruises on his face. Veth removed the manacles from his lips without much effort, and he twitched with some confusion as they went directly into Jester's backpack. He gathered himself, then glanced towards the door. A moment, before he looked at Caleb next. "Do you have a focus, that you use?"

"I have sort of a fondness for the actual components," Caleb admitted, patting his various pockets, "What do you need?"

"I want to know if I am being watched,” he said. He could imagine the drow scrying for him at this very moment.

"Fjord can do that!" Jester said, "So we'll wait for him I guess. Here, I can help with that." She touched the bruise on Essek's face and closed her eyes. The familiar warmth of healing magic flowed through him, green where he was accustomed to it being grey. The swelling faded. 

"Thank you, Jester."

"Are you okay?" Beauregard asked, glancing out the window to keep an eye out for their drow pursuers, "I mean, shit, if we hadn't --- you'd be toast." She trailed off. 

He took a breath. He tried to breathe, at least. He still had aches and he was wearing rags and he had narrowly escaped an execution and nonetheless he was -- he was a nobody now. An alive nobody. "I will tell the whole story when all of you are here."

"We need to not be anywhere these drow are looking for us," Caleb added, "Perhaps stay on the Ball Eater."

Jester nodded. “I’ll send a message to Fjord to see where he is.” She closed her eyes. “Fjord! We’re in the Landlocked Lady with Essek! Come on!” 

Then, amazingly, she hummed a few off-key notes Essek didn’t understand. Veth giggled as she opened her eyes and looked at them. “Fjord is super lost and he's pretending to know where they are.” 

Caleb took a breath. “I will find them. It’s not a very large city.” 

Essek looked up at him. “They are very dangerous. Be careful.” 

“Thank you, friend.”

In a while, they returned, all three of them slightly bloody, on account of a barfight that Fjord had intentionally started to throw the drow off their trail. The eight of them were cramped in the room with Essek on the bed with Caleb, Veth and Beau, and Yasha at the door, Fjord and Caduceus around the desk, and Jester looking out the window. 

“Fjord, see if we’re being watched,” Veth said. Fjord drew the Star Razor, glancing around once more and nodding an OK. 

Essek took a breath. He looked at the rags in his lap and to each one of them, and then to his hands, which were no longer scraped. He closed them into fists and closed his eyes, gathering. 

“For a while it was fine,” he said, remembering “Things were as they had been, before the war. Better. Ludinus did share research with me. And then I began to suspect that the Assembly would have preferred me gone.” 

“We saw that coming,” Beauregard said, rolling her eyes.

“Their clumsiness was intentional. I was covering the tracks they laid to try and uncover mine. The hints they left for other Dynasty officials, and the things others said about me. I was able, for a while, to cover for these things. To have preparations ready, excuses, alibis.” 

“Did you think they would stop?” Caduceus asked. 

Essek looked up at that. He scanned the pink face, those sharp eyes. “Not so much a matter of if they would stop. People will always, have always, will continue to say… things about me. It is a political court; if someone isn’t bad-mouthing you, then you know something is wrong.” 

“Sounds awful,” Caduceus added, and he nodded. 

“I was prepared to handle that front for as long as I needed, and I thought that I could.” 

“You don’t seem super good at making that judgement,” Beauregard said, leaning over to look past Veth and Caleb to him, “So you fucked that up.” 

He smiled a pained smile. She always did find the bruise and jab her finger on it. He was familiar with her order. It was their specialty. “Yes, in the simplest of ways. And so I was set to be executed for apostasy, and then I was rescued, and now I am here. Now I am just… Essek.” 

There was none of the silence that he wished was there, after he said those words. Sure they had done what they had done, his former den, his mother, the dynasty. They had done all the rituals and said all the words and punished him. Even so, through the rescue, it had not felt - real. When he gave sound to the words he felt it hollow out a bit of his heart. A strange bit that he had never cared for, and yet all of a sudden the absence ached and pulsed. 

They didn’t notice, of course. They gave each other looks, and then Jester asked, “Did you just not want to be, ah, um, Theylss, anymore?” 

He looked up at Jester. Of course she didn’t know about their rituals.

He smiled a wry smile and saw her try to understand it. “As part of the ceremony, I am made - _ah’ilzeer_ \- nobody. I am a non-person, in Rosohna. I am stripped of my den and my family and my possessions and my … everything. I do not exist.” A paused for a moment, letting them process. Then, so they understood: “The woman who was about to behead me was my mother.” 

There was an expected silence. Then: 

“You.. ,” Jester said, evidently forced, “..can be a Lavorre!” 

“Or a Widogast.” 

“You don’t really want to be a Lionett.” 

“I don’t know if you’d make a good Clay, but of course you can try.” 

“You’re a little tall for a Brenatto.” 

He took them all in, and then set his gaze back to his lap. “Thank you, friends, but just Essek is fine.” 

“For what it’s worth, you don’t actually need a last name,” Fjord added, “I’ve done pretty well without one for my entire life and there’s no reason for you to think you need one.” 

“You have last name, Fjord,” Veth said. 

“Not really,” Fjord stared at Veth, and he wondered the backstory there. Maybe at some point he’d find out, “And I don’t really want to get into it right now.” 

“You are all very, very generous, as always,” he held up his hands, “But saving my life is enough for now and at some other time, I will figure out if and what surname i would like to collect next.” 

Caleb stood, and there was some rearrangement of everyone with the space on the bed made. Yasha sat next to Beauregard on the bed, and Fjord took the spot near the door. “Unless anyone has any attachments to this inn or this, ah, charming locale, obvious exceptions included, I think we should go before mother of the year Theylss finds us.” 

He quietly marvelled at their strange teamwork, the way they started to rearrange the furniture in the room, as quietly as possible, to make space for teleportation circle. So Caleb could not yet teleport without a circle, then. 

He felt out impossibly of place, moving to get out of the way of Veth sticking her hands in drawers or Yasha and Jester, putting the dresser on the bed, or Caduceus, keeping his ear to the door. They all knew where all the others were, like a limb. He bumbled through and around them like a drow in magical dark. 

Caleb looked up in surprise, and then the words registered. "Perhaps, for the first time, we should tell Yussa we're coming.” 

“Erenis?” he echoed, and Caleb nodded. 

“Have you met?” Caleb asked.

“Briefly, yes.” 

“Yussa!” Jester said, “We’re coming to use your teleportation circle to go to the Ball Eater and we’re bringing our friend Essek, just Essek. See you soon!”

Fjord and Beau actually clapped, and it took Essek a baffled moment to realize why, and then despite all the misery of how things were he could not help but smile. 

“I notice you didn’t ask if Master Erenis was using the outhouse,” he said, trying to gather his prison rags in the best possible display of dignity he could manage. 

“Well, you see, we always forget to let him know we're teleporting into his house, so I didn’t want to distract him from the fact we were really being super nice and giving him a heads up with anything else.” Having settled the dresser on the bed with Beau, Jester came back over to him, then took the pink backpack off her lap and opened the top. She reached into and pulled out a long, ocean-smelling coat, then held it out to him. "Here, you can wear this." 

He took it in his hands, taking a long look over it and inhaling the faint scent of mold. There was something flamboyant about it, long and teal-colored, but it was not really a Jester coat. Even more confusion was the way Fjord saw the coat, double-taked at it, and then was evidently pretended he hadn’t, instead decided to watch Caleb draw lines on the floor like he knew what they were. 

“I’m not going to ask where this came from, and, thank you, but I am equipped.” He handed the coat back and flicked his fingers, putting on the image of his normal clothes. It felt strange, to pretend to be this person that he knew with impossible confidence he no longer was. He should not have been pretending these Theylss clothes that he wore, and yet what other clothes could he put on, other than rags, and Jester’s certainly-stolen sea coat?

“We are ready, then?” Caleb asked, and then there were nods, and then they were in the tower, almost familiar, with the glittering sun that was a little too harsh even inside.

What was the goblin’s name again, that appeared in his formal clothes, looking at all of them?

“Hello, Wensforth,” Caleb said, “We do not need to speak to Master Yussa, but as always thank him for letting us go and come in his tower.” 

“But he would like to speak to you,” said Yussa, appearing behind Wensforth and shooing him away. 

“Ah, what can we help with?” Fjord asked, as Yussa lead them to a sitting room, comfortably upholstered. 

Essek had the feeling that his disguise was not enough. He squashed the urge to fidget with the clothes that he could feel brush his form and did not at all match what was displayed. Even if the injuries were gone, everything was aching with pure exhaustion. He was free. Had not been executed. 

As free as exile could be. 

Had his home been perfect? No, of course not. But he had had the tower, and the conservatory, and the comfortable darkness of the city, and the familiar, if frustrating, ongoings of the Dynasty. 

“‘Master Just Essek?” Yussa asked, “Given what I know about these adventurers and you, you are one of the last people I would expect to see in their company.” 

“Certain things have changed,” he said, looking up at Yussa. 

Yussa tilted his head. He took them all in. Wensforth served tea and charcuterie. 

“Master Widogast,” Yussa began again, and Caleb looked up at him, “You and Essek are acquainted?” 

“We have taken him into our party, in fact,” Caleb said. 

Yussa looked at Essek again, even more puzzled, and he said nothing. Caduceus said, “It’s been a while, but we went back to the Savalierwood after a long journey…” 

They drank tea, for a while, and talked about the Savalirwood, and Yussa did not ask about him again. Even the dusk stung his eyes. Tomorrow the sun would come up, and probably the day after that, and the day after that, and the day after that. 

“Here you go,” Jester said, handing him another parasol, after Yussa let them leave. “Even better than the first one!” 

“Thank you,” he said, trying not to think about that it would be sunny tomorrow, in this strange city, where there were no drow, and without his libraries and experiments, gone unfinished. He would have to go back for the books.It didn't take long to get to the ship. He looked out into the growing darkness of the ocean. The ocean, his brain said. _The ocean._

“Essek?” Fjord said, looking at him. 

“Yes?” 

“Are you alright?” 

The boards of the ship felt strange under his feet. He would have to become accustomed to it again, walking. He was barefoot and it did not quite hurt but it was not comfortable. 

“Fine, thank you,” he said, because that was what he said. 

“I could show you to some of the empty cabins, if you’d like,” Caleb said, “Our accommodations are not as glamorous, but they’re adequate.” 

“They are very glamorous, and I suppose they’re my accommodations as well now.” 

“Is there anything else we can do for you?” Jester asked,. 

“I think a moment to myself would be appreciated.” 

“If that is what you would like,” Caleb said, “Feel free to take any of the cabins. The captain’s one is Fjord’s, though.” 

“Of course.” 

He felt their eyes on him. He went down the steps again, feeling them strange under his bare feet. There was a cabin all the way in the back. It was small. He didn’t mind. He sat on the bed and closed his eyes. His mother’s face in the ceremonial wear. The words that she said. The way they had chained him and dragged him to the ground, and the gasp he’d swallowed back when Jester’s voice had touched his mind. He knew that other peoples dreamed, and felt grateful that he did not. 

When he awoke from the trance it was blissfully dark and quiet in his room. A strange wooden place, in Nicrodramas, where they were. Where he was now, for he had been cast out in every way possible from his people. Had deserved it, for sure. It hurt for a reason. His chest felt like a particularly terrible spell-gone-wrong. It felt like what happened when you teleported into a wall and it threw you back out. 

He couldn’t be in this room anymore. He had to be outside, even if outside was an alien outside.


	2. strange reflections

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The heat of the ocean night stuck strangely to him in the rags. The moon was bright and the darkness was comforting, and all at the same time it hurt more. On the deck was was Yasha, the silhouette of her weapons on her back, holding what very much appeared to be a harp.

The heat of the ocean night stuck strangely to Essek in his rags. Rescued, alive, rag-wearing Essek, he thought, trying to put it all together in his head. The moon was bright and the darkness was comforting, and at the same time, hurt more. This darkness was going to go away. The sun would rise, unconquered, into his life. This version of him was a sun-dwelling creature, impossibly. 

“Are you going somewhere, Essek?”

He startled, and then felt immediately embarrassed because of it. When he looked, he saw Yasha standing there, the silhouette of her weapons on her back, her long hair falling down her shoulders. She was leaning against the railing of the ship, holding what very much appeared to be a harp. A twitch of her finger and a not-unpleasant note pinged from it. 

He chastised himself. He had been so lost in his thoughts that he hadn't even heard it. It was embarrassing, not to mention dangerous. Who knows who wished to hurt his version of him, in this life. He needed to pay attention. 

He felt her watching him as he took in the deck, trying to shake himself out of the trance. Where did his feet wander, without him noticing? What sort of subconscious took him towards this city which undoubtedly loathed him? 

“I was feeling claustrophobic,” he said, stilling his feet and looking up at her. He twitched disguised clothes on to himself, as a habit. There was that sense again, about it being better and worse. It was a person he had practice being, and all at once it was a person he wasn’t anymore. “It is… a lot of getting accustomed.” A beat, and then he gestured. “That is a beautiful instrument.”

Out of all of them, she made the least sense to him. He understood Caleb in innumerable ways and the others in various scales. This tribeswoman was the most alien, in her size and her quiet. In her gentleness and her brutality. She had layers that were not like the layers of the rest of them. He wondered about her. No one like Yasha came from a typical upbringing. There was something undeniably tortured about her; oh, could he see that, know that, feel that, understood that.

“Thank you,” she said, folding it to her. “Being through a lot. Makes it hard to sleep. I know."

... And yet there was something oddly welcoming about her, soft. Patient, kind. For all the things she was, for all the battle he had absolutely sure she had witnessed, she carried so much more sadness than anger. He drifted closer, and then after a moment, put his feet back down to walk. This new person did not hover. 

His eyes moved from her to out into the dock. 

"Drow require less sleep than most humans," he answered, after a long time. Yasha didn't seem to mind. She looked at him, and then she turned next to him and put her elbows on the railing.

"You know," she said, after an even longer while, and while the silence was comforting her voice did not shatter it - rather, came in calmly, like rolling one delicate flavor into another, "I ran away from my tribe, too. They were going to kill me and I ran instead."

He looked at her. His gaze went to her pale face, along the mismatched armor, and back up. "Did you?" he asked.

She nodded. "I... I'm from Xorhas, too. The Moorlands."

"Oh," he said, and did not quite smile, but nodded, "Prior to you I never met any of your people, but I know of the roving tribes there. I wondered if you might be." A look back into the sleeping, quiet ship. "You're not like them.” 

"No, I mean, yes." She stumbled, shaking her head, "I mean, no, I'm ... not like them, and yes, I'm... from a tribe. Was. Not anymore. I ran away."

"That makes two of us, then." Out of all the people to have a kinship with, he thought, and then met her mismatched eyes. He had never noticed that before. "I suppose it wasn't that you also weren't interested in worshipping a mysterious artifact?"

"No, not that." Her hand went to the satchel at her side. A memory of that time, he was sure. "Do you know, of the culture, of my tribe?"

He shook his head. "There are some experts I--" A beat. "-- knew, but I'm not among their ranks."

"Well, in my tribe, you are assigned a mate, and I....loved someone else. And they found out."

"I'm sorry."

Yasha looked up at him. So strange, that Veth the halfling and Nott the goblin did not come higher than his hip and had so much viciousness and energy and power and teeth and crossbow bolts, and this Xhorhassian tribeswoman that dwarfed him and could seem -- tender. Delicate, like some massive stained-glass window of grey and silver.

"But eventually I joined the circus, and through the circus I got here." There was a story there, but this was not the time for prying. Instead, he watched her as she tilted her head back towards the deck in a flutter of braids, "And... they're a really good family. Better than your other one, I bet. It's hard to get used to them, families, I mean. I ran away from them a lot. But I'm staying now, and..... and you should, too."

He looked out into dark Nicrodramas and thought of his mother and his brother. Former mother, former brother. Thought of all of Den Theylss, really. The Shadows which reported to him. The others, that he argued with, and sometimes he supported. The Lens that he knew, that for so long he had kept at bay perfectly and only just the right twitch had gotten that angle focused directly on his actions.

He thought about the blindfold moment where he had heard screaming and crashing and their voices and had been picked up and Jester's voice was all around him and there had been a familiar voice with twisting magic. It was hard to realize just how much you didn't want to die until your mother was casting you out of every family and every circle and raising a great glaive you saw in your nightmares to end you. It was hard to imagine how grateful and desperate and the hysterical elation of your -- _your friends_ rescuing you. Your friends who claimed to be your family now. Your friends who had thrust all their names at you, obviously seeing it felt so impossibly alone to not be a Theylss.

"And," she added, "Fjord's right. You don't really need a last name if you don't want one. But sometimes you have to make one up when we pretend to be other people. I'm pretty bad at that. Maybe we could think of ones together and be, you know, brother and sister."

Essek looked all the way up Yasha. He came up to her shoulder, and less when he remembered to keep his feet on the ground. He could not stop the corner of his lip from rising up. She probably weighed twice him and, had she tried, carried three of him.

Despite that, he nodded. "I can think of some in advance," he said, "And I'll let you know."

"Oh, perfect," she said.

He looked down at his rags. He would need some new clothes. At least his funds were primarily stored in other planes, with his most important books. Maybe he would try to go back to his tower to get the books he wanted, though it would be a dangerous encounter.....

... Although from his tower, he would certainly be within range of beacon and return, maybe not even that much later --

\--- but maybe it would be hard, to get back to them, in some other body. 

The thought froze him.

He was grateful that it was dark, that she was looking at the harp again. The music was soft, haunting. Like her, he thought. He tried to unfreeze himself from this thought ( _he wanted to get back to them; it would be hard to get back to them_ ) and closed his eyes, letting the soft sound of her playing encompass him. He had never heard anything like it.

"Thank you, Yasha," he said.


	3. morning one

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What they had done, he mused, was rescue a shadow of a person. Rescuing the bits and pieces left over when you stripped the mantle and the rank and the skin. In rescuing him they'd burned that bridge and he could barely even repay them, other than in funds.

It was just Essek and Yasha on the deck for a while she had wished him good night, and then it had only been him, and then with a sigh he went belowdecks again, and it felt a little less claustrophobic. Strange, Yasha the tribeswoman. He at least had come from another civilization, even if it was different. He had a place, a people. What was it like for her, to be exiled from the tribe? Even if she could go back, there was no place for her to go back to. Her people roamed.

Certainly, he thought, feeling a lump in his chest, she knew the feeling of always sticking out where she went. She was human, sure, as much as he was an elf. Sure, there were darkskinned elves - he had met a few - but they were not drow. Sure, there were strongwomen, but it seemed impossible to imagine they would be like Yasha.

He settled. The darkness that came in from the window gave him some measure of calm, followed by a weighty dread. Tomorrow the sun would rise and the day after that and the day after that, and it would just be him, Essek of no den and no family at all, save for the misfit friends that rescued him.

Maybe the day was starting already in Den Theylss, a place he no longer belonged. The flutter of morning communications he was no longer part of. The muttering gossip and party-murmurs that came after a night, that he could no longer scoff directly at.

Here it was still dark and his friends slept. Short of running - and where was there to run, really? - there was nothing to do. He closed his eyes again and tried to find the trance. It came to him easy, blessedly. His mo-- the umavi had complained it became harder to trance, as you aged. He felt thankful, that drow did not dream.

Less thankful, when the impossibly brilliant sun woke him. It was like a lance cutting through the window, slicing down his face and leaving a whitened scar. He groaned and turned from it, but even so the cabin was much too bright and there was nothing to cover the portholes with. 

If he cocked his ears he could hear their footsteps along the ship.

"Day one," he said to himself, and then looked down the rags he was left with. He lifted his finger and reached into his demiplane and found his spellbook, and reached deeper in to feel the pile of coins he stored. He had money, a little magic, and some rags.

The first thing to do was to repay them. Money was universal, and of course Caleb could gather more dunamancy, and he had plenty of information about the Dynasty the Nein might find useful. He owed them a lot. They had permanently ended their relationship with the Dynasty. Did they think about that, did they know? They must have. The house would be repurposed. They would be destroyed if they used the teleportation circle again. All for him. Rags-and-spellbook him. Drow him, he thought, with a sigh. Certainly he was no Theylss, here, but that would matter little, to anyone who disliked drow to begin with. He would have to wear a disguise in most places. 

How had Nott - Veth - felt, a goblin in the Empire? He recalled the half-mask she would wear around her neck. A breath of a sad laugh. It would not be enough for him.

What they had done, he mused, was rescue a shadow of a person. Rescuing the bits and pieces left over when you stripped the mantle and the rank and the skin. In rescuing him they'd burned that bridge and he could barely even repay them, other than in funds.

Finally, he gathered his feet under him and pulled a disguise of decent clothes over his rags. He took a deep breath and opened the door into the ship belowdecks. Here it was brighter than ever, and above him their voices rang in their misfit chorus. So unlike his hou--

\- so unlike Den Theylss, quiet and thoughtful and contemplative, similar, arranged like clockwork. Hundreds of years of rut-worn habits. The Nein shouted over each other.

"We're going shopping! I'll ask my momma's tailor about Essek's clothes. I hope he's not too emo about the whole name thing." Jester's voice.

"He could hear you." That was Caleb, sharp, and Essek turned away from it, even if Caleb couldn't see him.

"I mean, we're a pretty good replacement family." Veth.

"The best," Yasha. Essek thought about her, about her tribe, about her strange harp, about her offer to pretend to be his sister.

"Don’t take too long," Beauregard said. Then Essek heard four sets of footsteps above him, leaving blessed shadows when they covered the lattice of the ceiling for a few moments each.

"I"ll get something started. I wouldn't want him to miss breakfast." Caduceus.

"Good idea," Caleb.

There were four steps of footsteps across the ceiling in the other direction. Essek took a breath and headed in the same directions as the steps. These voices were going to be an important part of his new life. He would adjust, of course. It was only that it was so strange, so wild in their way. He thought, for a second, that he would leave them for his tower, only .... there was no tower, not really, not anymore. He was probably not going to some place where they were not. Not until he figured out where that was, really.

Down the way a little was a long room with narrow tables. Fjord, Caleb and Beureagard looked up when he appeared.

"Good morning, friend," Caleb said, looking at Essek as he sat down on the bench next to him, "It was quite a day for you yesterday. How's this one, so far?"

"Very bright," Essek said, "But I rested well enough, and whatever it is is next for me.... I must be prepared for it."

"You could move where I'm from," Beauregard said, "The weather's super shitty there. Always really overcast. Drow heaven."

"Drow heaven," Essek said, not looking at her, "will execute me on sight."

There was a silence. Caduceus appeared from a door on the other side of the hallway, holding a plate with something strange-smelling on it. He put it in front of Essek, along with some ragged-looking cutlery and then sat down on the other side of him.

"How are you feeling?" Caduceus asked him. He turned, squinting just a little less in the light, to take in the tall, pink-firred firbolg.

"Quite fine," he said, because that was what you said, when someone asked you a question like that. He began to eat the meal, if for no other reasons than to be polite, only to find the meal was surprisingly delicious, packed with strange and complimentary flavors. Not like anything he had ever tasted, but not less amazing. Caduceus brightened, perhaps upon seeing his face.

"Well, I guess we're not getting the Xhorhause back," Beauregard said, next, "I figure like, rescuing a heretic from an execution kind of makes you persona non grata, beacon returning or no beacon returning."

"That’s certainly the case, Myself, or Caduceus, or Jester could scry on it to see if something has happened to it yet." He paused for another bite, considering, "It might remain, as to not cause a stir, but I find it unlikely the Bright Queen approves of you denying her the execution of apostates." There was another beat. He put the fork down, slow, and felt the appetite leave him all him all at once. It was suddenly hard to look up at them. "Being the cause of the loss of all your boons....... I will make it up to you, somehow."

"You are worth more than ten Xorhauses, Essek," Caleb said, with ferocity. He reached over, putting his hand on top of Essek's on his lap, "No one executes the Mighty Nein, and that very much includes you."

He looked up from Caleb's hand, pale against his dark skin and the violet cloth of his disguise, to see those blue eyes looking at him. "I am indebted to you." A glance at the other three, "All of you. Deeply."

"Hey, wait," Fjord began, "You don't owe us anything. We didn't do it for the favor or something. We did it because you're our friend and the idea of you being murdered wasn't okay with us. You'd fit in pretty well here but you're not obligated to stay."

"Would you prefer me to leave?"

"Fjord didn't say that," Caleb, quick, his hand twitching on top of Essek's, "Only that none of this includes obligation from you."

Essek slipped his hand away to pick back up the fork again. If nothing else, the food was good.

"Really, though," Caduceus said, "None of this is about favors, or paying anyone back. You've always been there for us when we needed you, and we care about you, so we helped you when you needed us to be there."

"When you have needed me to be there prior, it was to teleport you to some dragon," he found himself saying, "That is not the same as losing any ability to spend time in a place you felt even a modicum of home and had the ear of the long-ruling Emperess."

"We'll just stumble upon some other ancient artifact and then be forced by random circumstances to return it to the people who worship it in some other place," Fjord said, fake casually, "Wasn't too hard the first time."

Beauregard rolled her eyes. She put her elbows on the table and rested on them. Essek had known of the Cobalt Soul before her, and understood the danger that they had posed to his plans, and the danger that they posed to the drow. He wondered if more of them were like her. "You stuck your neck out for us when we were like, actively potentially dangerous to your, you know, whole treason thing. Even if in your head you were doing it to keep an eye on us or something, I don't know what shitty politics go in that you had to say --- oh yeah, trust the group with the two humans, I'm down with them. So if we have to give up shit for you, whatever, fair."

He grimaced. It was not long ago he was in arguments with Taskhands and Bladehands that they could were traitors or spies or moles. He had almost laughed, when they had accused the Nein of stealing the beacon and returning it as part of a ploy. He had made a few enemies among the other dens, about them. Not that those enemies mattered now, of course. All the dens were his enemies, even Den Theylss.

"You don't owe us," Caduceus said again, "Among us we give what we can and we take what we need and we find it all comes out even in the end."

Caleb nodded. "If you stay, and we would very, very much like that, then you can repay us by sharing the teleporting with me, and perhaps using some of that dunamancy on whatever enemies are next for us."

Essek shook his head. He almost laughed at how unbelievable it all was, these people. "That is not nearly enough. We only began your studies, for example." He turned towards Caleb and saw the very, very poor job at trying to disguise the brightening of his whole demeanor at that. Essek's chest lightened perceptibly. Returning the favor by making that light in Caleb's eyes was absurd and hardly enough, and yet the thought brushed his mind anyway.

"Somehow I imagine the things you could teach me would pay me back for six execution rescues," Caleb said, softer.

Beareguard rolled her eyes. The noise of her standing from the table caused Essek to look away from Caleb, and he was startled when he felt the weight of Caleb's familiar in his lap.

"Anyway," Beauregard was saying, "Jester, Yasha and Veth went into Nicodramas to figure out if we could get you some actual clothes because I'm pretty sure those are pretend clothes. Jester and Caduceus picked out all our outfits at that party so you'll be as fashionable as the rest of us."

They didn't even realize what it was they had discarded, he realized. They thought that the Dynasty, that Rosohna, was just some place they weren't going to go anymore. They thought so little of the dark streets and the comforting night and the halls of the conservatory.

"I will pay for whatever it is," he said, quick, because he could do that, at least, "I'm prepared with funds, at least."

The four of them all looked at eachother, exchanging some secret thought.

"Sure," Fjord said.

Essek narrowed his eyes. "I understand that I bring so little, and if you could at least permit me this small accommodation, I would appreciate that."

"You bring so much," Caleb said, "You are a dunamatic prodigy and an arcane scholar. A very wise wizard once told me... give yourself some credit."

He thought he should have been angry, but it was challenging, to be angry at Caleb.

"Once Jester gets you some clothes, we were thinking of going into town and seeing Jester's mother and Veth's family," Fjord said.

"The one that I imprisoned?" Essek asked.

Fjord winced. "That one."

Essek winced, too.

"Jester's mom wins the mom competition among us. Your mom probably loses for nearly killing you, but there’s some competition for shitty moms among us," Beauregard said. Caleb's face, Essek noted, went professionally blank in a way he had never seen Caleb before. It wasn't an expression anyone wished, wanted, tried, could practice. He would not have wished the sudden haunt in Caleb's eyes on anyone.

He thought, suddenly, about how Caleb had looked that day outside his tower. A brief spark of rage, that someone, something, had caused Caleb to suffer. He doused that flame for the moment and gathered himself instead. "Jester is not usually subtle. Will this tailor reject fitting drow?"

"Jester can be subtle when she wants," Fjord retorted, "She just usually doesn't. She'll bring it up if she thinks it's a good idea. You can trust her."

Essek nodded. He thought, but could not bring himself to say: _For some reason, I do._

"You really should meet Jester's mother properly," Caleb said, as if he had not, at some immediately previous thought, been far away, under some hellish pit, in some place that roared agony, "She won't care what you are. She is a famous courtesan here in the Menagerie Coast, and it's not hard to see why, once you talk to her."

"Or see her."

"Beau." Fjord looked at Beauregard, who shrugged.

“Jester’s mom is insanely hot,” she said, to Essek.

“Ah,” he said, watching Fjord sigh and Caleb nod, after a moment, and Caduceus become contemplative. 

“I made more breakfast, if you’re still hungry.” 

“Yes, please,” he said, because that was what you said, when someone asked you if you wanted more.


	4. appearances

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I talked to momma's tailor and they had some good ideas for some clothes for you and they got all excited to fit a drow because like, there aren't a lot here obviously," Jester said, and Essek made a strange face.

For a while the three of them talked amongst themselves about their next to-dos, which included acquiring basilisk venom, catching up with old friends, and discovering the fanes of Tharizdun and making sure they were safe. It was strangely comforting to listen to him, to only contribute when they asked. They had goals and plans and strategies and those goals and plans all seemed insane as they had always been. 

"We're back!" Jester's voice, followed by three steps of footsteps above them, "Essek! We got you a present!"

"Down here!" Beauregard shouted up, and the footsteps rung across the roof.

Essek looked up at roof in surprise, then back at the three of them. He had fallen into a conversation about dunamancy with Caleb, discussing the nature of the fragment of possibility, and how chance and decision worked. Caleb was such a diligent student, with his thoughtful questions and the way he watched Essek, that it was easy to forget the dreadfulness of the world that awaited him. Caleb asking him about the nature of alternate realities could make him forget that he had no home to go back to.

He had forgotten, even, to re-cast the disguise that hid his rags. The shouting shook him from the trance, and he heard them come down the staircase, and into the room. He startled as unfamiliar woman appeared in the room in Jester's clothing, reaching for the magic twisting in his mind.

"It's me, Jester!" she said, and Fjord was already standing between him and Jester, his sword in hand, teeth bared. "Oh right, I forgot about the disguise. Fjord, you can put the sword down."

"I'll fucking kill him if he touches her!" Veth shrieked, and Essek felt the crossbow bolt bounce off his arcane shield.

"Veth!" Caleb shouted, bolting past the woman who had Jester's voice and to Veth in the doorway.

"Everyone just take a breath," Caduceus said, standing next to him and putting his hand on Fjord's sword.

"Sorry, Essek," The woman who had Jester's voice said, and then it was Jester, and he felt so, so, so stupid.

He let the half-formed spell slip from his mind and slumped, staring at his robe-disguised legs and feeling even more like the prisoner he had just been.

Idiot, he berated himself, and then Jester-Jester was coming over to him and sitting in front of him. "I got you a present," she repeated, and then she grabbed his wrist and opened his palm. In it she put a pair of grey-wired rims set with some sort of dark glass. "Now you'll be able to look outside all the time and not be blinded."

"I certainly don't deserve any gifts from you," he said, "You... would not have done well that spell landed."

"You like, just escaped, it wasn't super smart of me to surprise you," she smiled, folding his hands over them and pushing them into his lap. "So really it was my bad. And I got them for you, so they're yours."

"This really--"

"If you don't take them I'll be more mad," she said, and frowned at him, in her disarming way.

"If you insist."

"I do."

He held the glasses up and studied them. The wires along the side did not bend too much in the back, so they could rest over his ears. He put them on, slow, and hardly felt the sigh of relief leave him as the room dimmed significantly.

"Not as cool as mine, but pretty cool," Beauregard said, "Nice find, Jes."

"Well, I didn't want him to walk into a wall or something, disguise or no disguise," Jester replied, "And don't listen to Beau, those are actually super cool."

"I kind of want to steal them," Yasha said, finally coming into the room, behind who had put the crossbow away.

He was already taking them off and moving towards her. "If you want them, please, feel free."

"I don't --" Yasha took a step back into the doorway, holding her hands up, "I don't actually want them. They're for you. You can't see without them."

"I don't think she meant she actually wanted to steal them," Caleb said, from behind him, "She just thinks they're really cool."

"Yeah. What Caleb said." She smiled an uncomfortable smile.

"If you insist," Essek said, and Yasha nodded. In truth he was thankful. The glasses really did make his eyes hurt a lot less, if he looked out to where the sun spilled down the open lattice into their belowdecks.

There seemed to be a long moment. He sat, slowly, touching them, taking them off and studying them again. To be rescued and given a place to stay and then to nearly turn her to nothingness and now -- lenses to protect his eyes.

Words escaped him. His chest felt hot and his limbs felt heavy and strange. The pulse of the headache began to roar back. He found, not for the first time with them, that he did not know what to say.

"I also got some cupcakes for everyone," Jester continued, as if none of it had happened, and opened her pink backpack, taking out the box and handing them out, even putting one in front of him, "And I talked to momma's tailor and they had some good ideas for some clothes for you and they got all excited to fit a drow because like, there aren't a lot here obviously."

He couldn't help but look up at that. "Excited?"

"I mean, it's not every day you get to hang out with cool drow, unless you're us now I guess. We can go whenever you're ready."

He looked at them through the dark lenses. They were waiting, eating their cupcakes, muttering to each other and looking at him. He wanted to ask a thousand questions about everything that had just happened and how it had come and gone and why Jester had been disguised if she lived here and about this tailor's excitement.

"I'm ready," he said, brushing invisible dust off his disguise.

"Great!" Jester said, and then she put the disguise back on herself as well, "Let's go! I can refill the cupcakes."

"You are an ever flowing well of pastries," Caleb said, appreciatively. She laughed at him.

All eight of them walked to the deck of the ship. It was blisteringly bright. The glasses helped, even more than he expected. He altered his disguise, settling into a blonde, dark-skinned elf with silver robes. He should come up with a new name, for this disguise. Sure it was unlikely that other people had heard of him, but it was important to be safe, with these matters. The thought of coming up against some agent of the Empire, or worse, the Dynasty...

"Essek?" Caleb was saying, softly, evidently a second time, as they walked - walked!! -- down the street. Jester and Veth first, and Fjord and Beauregard, and him and Caleb, and Yasha and Caduceus in the back.

"Apologies, I was.... thinking," he said, quick. "Perhaps I should take a different name altogether. This person that I was, Essek -- there is not much left of him, really. They will start quite promptly on breaking my seals on my possessions and repurposing them for Dynasty uses."

Caleb turned white. "Your books," he said, aghast, "We must recover them. We can hardly simply let them... steal your library."

Essek's chest did something strange. He almost even smiled. "You have done enough. The tower will be swarming with Dynasty forces. To go back now would be suicide."

"A worthy death," Caleb replied, scowling, "Protecting the library of my friend."

He stopped dead, and behind him Caduceus gave him a little shove, until he restarted, still lost for words.

"Here we are!" Jester announced in the front, standing in front of a neat little shop. From the front hung a size painted with a needled and thread, and in an elegant embroidery font said TAILORLY AND REVELRY. "Veru!! I brought the drow!"

"Wonderful!" came a voice, strange to Essek's ears, and then appearing was a feline figure in a long, elaborate dress of blue fabric. A tabaxi, he realized, taking in the pointed ears and the spotted fur. There had been a few in and out of Rosohna, and some in his shadier dealings, but certainly he knew less than a handful. "Welcome, welcome!”

"Ah, hello," he said, and bowed his head, "Thank you for attending to me, at short notice."

"Of course!" the tabaxi said, whipping out measuring cords, "It's not every day you get to see a drow! That's worth changing your day around for, for sure. I mean, making clothes for elves is fine, but enough else is enough elves, and of course--" here the tabaxi looked at Jester, -- "While your mother is absolutely beautiful and stunning, it's nothing new these days."

"I won't tell momma," Jester said, smiling.

"I'm," they gathered themself, "happy to provide such an honor."

“Oh, where are my manners, where are my manners!” The tabaxi rushed up to him, cords in their hand, and then reached forward to grab his hand and shake it. “I’m Veruthil Denaratha. Welcome to Tailorly and Revelry.” 

“My name is Essek,” he bowed his head. It was easier that time, even if it still felt so impossibly short, so impossibly small, so impossibly unimpressive. Just Essek. 

"Essek! An absolutely lovely name."

Den Theylss' normal tailor had been a tall, wispy drow who wore her hair in long braids that came all the way down to the floor. When he had been a child, he had had a lot of questions about them. He'd liked Irie. She was businesslike and serious, but there had been a warm spot in her, and she'd given his questions the serious answers he had been looking for, even then. He held his arms up.

Veruthil brought the cord up and then narrowed their eyes at him. "Now," they said, frowning, "This is a disguise, and I know you don't have any real clothes so you don't have to hide or anything. I'm sure one of your friends can close all the windows so if there's someone looking out for you they won't find you."

"That gets me thinking, are they -- going to scry you can follow us?" Fjord asked, turning to watch Caleb close the shutters. The place darkened significantly. Essek took off the glasses and, without thinking, dropped them into the demiplane where he kept his spellbook.

"That was amazing!" Veruthil said, before he could get a word out, "Where did it go?" One feline hand was brushing the space where he'd drawn the line.

"I have a small plane where I store things that are important to me," he said. Veruthil was measuring him with a little more awe, now.

"You can say, Essek," Jester said, "Veru keeps a lot of secrets. They know a lot of stuff."

He dropped the illusion of the clothes and heard Veruthil wince.

“So...” Fjord said, again, “Are we being chased?” 

He tried to imagine Leylas pacing, arguing with his moth-- with the umavi, with Dierta. Dierta would want to come after him immediately. She would feel the familiar offense, that he had let her down. He could become the Dynasty's most impressive dunamancer and earn his rite to consecution at one hundred and eight, and she was still disappointed. Of course, she'd say. This was bound to happen. He was always going to find some way to disappoint his good name of Theylss.

He recalled an early moment, when he was still training to hear things that weren't said and learn things that didn't want to be learned, that she had hoped he was another house, reborn. She hadn't even wanted him to be _him_.

"I don't think so," he said, right as it looked like Caleb was about to say that if it was painful, he need not talk about it. "Dierta - Denmother Theylss - would hunt me to the edge of Exandria and further if she was permitted to choose. But the Bright Queen will see that the damage has already been done, and hopefully her and the Dusk Captain will see it is better not to risk the fragile peace. Quana - the Dusk Captain - certainly will. She knows how capable I am and she won't think I'm worth it. She can usually persuade the Bright Queen to her path."

"Oh, wow," Veruthil said, "Sounds dramatic like that you ended up here. So you're a big drow hotshot?"

"Was."

"So are you from a drow city? I've never been to one but I bet they're amazing. Do you live underground?"

"I'm from Rosohna, the drow capital, and it is the most beautiful city on any plane you can imagine." The tailor wrapped the cord around his neck and it took every inch of his training not to flinch. "And Rosohna is aboveground. Drow there maintain magic to keep the sky dark. Like, if you follow the rumors, at the garrisons along the Ashkeepers."

"Wow," Veruthil said, standing back with their pile of measurements and looking up and down Essek's rags. They were tapping the end of the pen against their lip, "But it sounds like you can't go back."

"No."

"That's sad."

Essek looked down at his rags and then over at his compatriots, who were bickering amongst each other about their plans of adventures, going to see Jester's mother, something about a weasel, and something about Tharizdun. Oh yes. They had said something about Tharizdun, back when he had been the Shadowhand. 

He thought about the familiar night sky and this tower and the Lucid Bastion and the Conservatory and the neat streets and the dark wood and the familiar shops and sounds. 

"Yes," he said, his face placid. 

“Well, Essek, what can I make for you?” They brightened. “Are you ready to embrace your exciting future as a citizen of the Menagerie Coast? Most people will definitely sell you things and won’t look sideways at you. It is kinda strange, but not that strange, just make sure you stay clear of the Empire.” 

“I was thinking,” he began, instead of thinking about being a citizen of this impossibly bright place, warm and humid and strange, with all the fluttering banners and shouting people, “Something dark that would flow around me. Something to hide me.” 

“Like a big cloak.” 

“Exactly.” This was a much better conversation. “Underneath, something somewhat fitting, with whatever are the more popular styles of this area. There should be opportunities for pockets.” 

“You can’t just hide everything in your, um --” Veruthil gestured to the space next to him.

“Not everything,” he said, and smiled. It was a strange comfort, to be permitted a little mystery. To be impressive to someone, somewhere. To be powerful and heroic again, like he had been, in the person he had been before this rag-wearing exile. 

Veruthil took a step back, their ears twitching excitedly. They looked down at their notes and then at Essek and then at the notes again, nodding, “I have some ideas,” they said, “Come back tomorrow and I will have some clothes for you. For the Ruby’s friends, I put things aside and make it work. And drow too! Oh, this going to be amazing. They can’t just be regular clothes, I can see even in this, um, outfit, you have some flair to you, and I can see just how I’m going to make the fabric cut, and there’s a perfect element here for some burnt oranges. I have just the perfect fabric for the pants as well, and we’ll have layers--” 

“So is that it then?” came Caleb’s voice from behind them, startling Veruthil out of the rambling explanation. 

“I think so,” Essek said, quickly, before the tailor could start asking him about his no-longer-home again, or gather more steam talking about patterns. He twitched his fingers and settled his old clothes in disguise over him. It didn’t feel like a relief, this time. It felt like he was pretending to be someone else. 

“Are you done?” Jester asked, finally looking over from where she had been playing cards with Veth and, if Essek studied the coins for a moment, had been losing, “Are we going to see my momma now?” 

“If that’s next on the list, yes,” Essek said. He thought longingly of his empty, dark bunk on the ship. They wished to see Jester’s mother, though, and certainly that was not something he could deny. Would Jester’s mother have time in her schedule, for them? Would she cast her eye on Jester’s friends and give them the look Essek knew plenty well enough? 

“Thanks Veru,” Jester said to Veruthil, who smiled, their tail flicking behind him, barely looking up from the drafting paper they were mostly hidden behind. 

“This way!” she said. Essek twitched his disguise, trying to shake off the strange unfamiliarity of light skin and dark hair. He pulled the glasses over his eyes and let the wave of the Mighty Nein carry him outside.


	5. a comparison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I appreciate your thoughts, Marion, but my family is -- was --" It felt strange in his mouth, all of a sudden. Then Caleb squeezed his hand and it felt like that hand was directly on his spine, straightening it. "--had you known my mother, this would not have been unexpected or surprising in the least."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you've liked, kudos, commented, reblogged, etc, this story.... thank you!! i really appreciate it! sorry i bumped the chapters up by one.

As they walked through Nicodramas, Jester, Essek noticed, had the same disguise she’d used when she came onto the ship. She led them, her and Beauregard first, then Fjord and Caduceus, then him, Veth and Caleb, then Yasha in the back, through the bright, colorful streets of Nicodramas. He tried to imagine wearing clothes like theirs and it felt impossibly alien. He wasn’t like these people, and yet there was no other choice. 

He had questions, but they were heavy, in his chest. The tailor’s exuberance for drow, asking about his city, about his family. It hung on him, like the mantle he missed. 

He thought about the march towards the Bloodroot tree. They had marched him in his rags through the city. That had been the last sight of the magnificent architecture and the beautiful buildings and the magical lanterns. When he remembered his home he remembered it as goblins sneered at him through windows and other drow refused to meet his eyes. 

Eventually they came into what was evidently considered, by Nicodramas standards, the good part of town. They walked into a beautiful building painted _The Lavish Chateau._ He should have asked Caleb questions instead moping about his life. There was nothing to be done about it now. He was just Essek; he was going to wear Nicodramas clothes; he was never going back to Rosohna. 

“Hi Bluud!” Jester said, to the minotaur, who gestured all of them inside, keeping his eye for several extra moments on him, “Oh, that’s Essek, he’s okay too.” 

The Lavish Chateau - this floor at least, for he could see the stairs winding up - was beautiful, well-kept, and exquisitely furnished. Jester’s mother the courtesan - he had a vague recollection of her, mostly blurred by the panic of the Nein being at that party in this very town - had spectacular taste or the wisdom to hire someone with it. The tables were almost entirely empty, a little before what Essek guessed to be noon, save for one or two. At one of the tables sat a halfling man with long sideburns pouring over a list. Essek studied him for a moment and then, with a jolt, knew exactly who he was. It was only that he had last seen the halfling with when he was starving the starvation of no longer being a useful prisoner, and Essek his jailor. And the time before that, when he had been dragged to Essek - who knew the hafling didn’t lie, because he knew about the experiments on the beacon - for interrogation. It had not been a terrible interrogation; Essek hadn’t hoped to learn anything. It had been an interrogation nonetheless.

Yeza, his name was. Veth had wanted him back desperately. Essek hadn’t judged them then, but it made a little more sense now. 

Yeza hadn’t noticed them yet, but then Veth was rushing up to him and sitting at the table and Yeza brightened instantly. They were talking about a volcano.

“One of the first things you ever did for us was to give him back,” Caleb said, next to him. 

Essek looked over, took in the man next to him. “You’re being very generous, given that you know who kept him captive.” 

“Sometimes a little generosity can go a long way,” Caleb said. 

They watched Jester rush up the stairs. Beauregard, Fjord, and Yasha went to the bar, with Caduceus, where Beauregard was immediately giving Fjord a hard time about their run tomorrow, and Fjord was looking absolutely miserable. At first he had thought their togetherness had been a show of force for a strange group of weaklings who needed each other. Now he realized that bond was genuine, and gave all of them strength. They not only preferred the cacophony of the group, but were improved by it. 

What was it like, to always be surrounded by people? That your comfort could be in someone else, and not the quiet contemplation of solitude?

Could he be improved by it? 

“Why is she in a disguise, if her mother is a courtesan in such a place?” he asked Caleb, turning from the bar.

"I suppose she is better with the details, but my understanding is she pulled some trick on one of her mother's guests that he did not at all like, and he attempted to have her executed, and she fled,” Caleb said.

Essek did not expect the sudden hot twist of anger in his chest. His jaw tightened. He could imagine the sort of trick Jester might want to play on such a person - harmless and irreverent. He absolutely imagine some noble, drow or otherwise, taking completely unreasonable offense. He turned from Caleb and looked up the stairs, then back.

"I would like to meet this guest," he said, with a glimmer in his eye that he knew Caleb would recognize. They were alike enough for him to know exactly what it meant. Even though he'd now known Caleb for months, it was unique and interesting and - impossibly magnetic, in some way - to know someone, like Caleb, like him. For years and years he had thought that there was nobody like him, not even the Assembly.

"She did it to him again, at the party where we snatched you from," Caleb said, and Essek couldn't help the quirk of the smile. That was Jester, certainly. Not like anyone else he knew. Not like any dro w, and especially none of his family, dull and boorish in all their ways.

"Good," he said, and Caleb nodded.

At that moment, Jester appeared at the top of the stairs, and gestured all of them up.

"We're day drinking!" Beauregard announced, already with a gleam in her eye, "Be up in a moment!"

"I'm going," Fjord said, and he put down the half-drunk whiskey, "If I keep drinking you'll have to drag me through the streets for running."

"I'll keep drinking with you, Beau," Yasha said, and Beauregard brightened.

"I'll keep watch on them," Caduceus said to Fjord, as Fjord made an impressive but visible effort to walk straight up the stairs.

Veth and Yeza had disappeared entirely, somewhere.

The four of them walked up the grand staircases and past the rooms up to the third floor, where Jester lead them to a set of beautiful wooden doors at the end of the hall. The door was open, and Jester went in first, followed by the three of them.

They were in a beautiful sitting room, elegantly furnished, with light streaming in through a number of half-shaded windows. He imagined those moments of terror when Jester's mother - Marion, they'd said her name was - was gathering things and hurrying her out the city. Even so, she'd retained that impossibly positive and cheery Jester outlook.

She had been exiled like him, but she had a place to go, for her to return to. Her mother quite evidently thought the orders were nonsense.

"Momma," Jester was saying, "This is Essek. Only he really doesn't look like this. He's actually a drow in rags."

"Hello," Marion said. She had been more lavishly dressed at the party, but even in her dressing room she was beautiful. She wore a delicate, dark blouse and a long dark skirt, and a beautiful silver necklace. "It's nice to meet you, Essek."

"The pleasure is mine, my lady," he said, with a little bow. The least he could do was alter the illusion so she could see what he really looked like, even if he disguised the rags. To her credit, she didn't startle at his black skin and white hair. She gestured all of them to a small seating area where there was a bowl of fresh fruit and a number of chairs.

"Marion, please, to my Jester's friends." She sat at one of the chairs, and Jester moved along with her, the rest of them following, "And how are the rest of you doing? Taking care, I hope." This she said primarily to Fjord, who was still not walking as perfectly as he could.

"Always," Fjord said, immediately. Marion nodded at him.

"Essek has always said that he wouldn't let any harm come to her," Caleb said, sitting next to Fjord.

"She is a very lovely young woman," Essek said, looking over at Jester. Her attention was focused on her mother. He did not understand. "It would be a misuse of my talents to let her come to harm. Though, if I may say so, she is very good at taking care of herself."

"Thanks, Essek," Jester said, finally looking back at him for a moment before turning back.

Marion nodded with approval. "If it is not private, may I ask how you came into the group?"

Essek opened his mouth, but Jester started first, and to his suppressed horror told the whole story. She talked about how they had met, that day in the council chamber, with Caleb holding the beacon. He remembered that moment with perfect clarity, because he’d never wanted to bring the full might of his power down on strangers before. Here they were, barging into the council chamber, returning the beacon he’d been panicking about for months. To them it was a bargaining chip to get them out of prison. 

He could have crushed them all into a single mote of dust. The magic had been heavy on his fingers, in that moment. He hadn’t.

She talked a little about their home that Den Theylss - he - had given them. How he had done them a few favors, teleporting them places. How they had helped the Dynasty’s war effort. 

She talked about when she had invited him to dinner. 

He remembered. That had been after the Tal’dorei woman had evoked their name to call off the attack on Rexxentrum, after they had insisted in being present at the peace talks. 

He had declined, then. He had gone back to his tower. He had sat down at his desk and looked at his notes. Neat, incomplete equations across the pages. Half-processed experiments. He had thought about Jester’s bright smile and Beauregard’s genuine and comical attempts to be welcoming. He had thought of when Caleb had touched him, when he had helped them recover Yasha. 

Their boisterousness was not for him. Like him. And yet.

And yet there had been a strange mote in his chest at that moment. He had picked the pen up and put it back down again, and picked up, and put it down again. Then he put his mantle on and gone to dinner and they had all been _glad to see him._

He thought of the dinners of Den Theylss. They were not drunk and laughing and slightly inappropriate. Dinner at Den Theylss was a formal affair, which he had more than once pretended to not receive the Message as to not have to go, and then next time he went was reminded of it. He would have traded away a third beacon to see Jester and Beauregard at a Den Theylss meal. 

His meals would never be like that again. They would be the loud meals of the Mighty Nein, for the foreseeable future. In taverns, probably. Not served by liveried servants. The difference ached, but it was not the most unpleasant ache, really. It was --- it was different. 

He tuned in again. Jester was at the end. She was saying, “...and we were already pretty close to where he was about to be killed but then we heroically rescued him from his shitty mom. We hid for a bit on the Ball Eater and we went to Veru to get him some clothes and now we’re here.” 

There was a pause. 

"That is quite a story," Marion said, reasonably stunned. Having them appear on his doorstep and ask him to teleport them places was one thing. Have that person be your child, who you cared about, must have been something else entirely.

"I imagine you hear a lot of very strange stories," Essek said, and she nodded, smiling at him.

"It's wonderful to hear all the good she does. Finding new friends, going on grand adventures, rescuing people from trouble."

"Sometimes you need a little rescuing," he said, and, next to him, Caleb nodded.

"This must be a very hard time for you," Marion said, and Essek understood, immediately, what made her the talented courtesan that she was. He was stunned to find himself nodding. He thought of all the people who could say such a thing -- heard Denmother Theylss saying in his mind and felt the instrinstric irritation that she thought she understood him -- and have it be so, so, so much worse.

"I have conquered obstacles before, my lady," he said, making the nod firmer, "This is a large one, but nothing I am incapable of managing."

"Marion, please," she said, and smiled, and it was a surprisingly disarming smile. She looked at Jester, and then Fjord, and then Caleb, and then him again, "These are the times it's helpful, to have friends to support you when it is hard to support yourself."

He didn't quite laugh, but the humored smile flit on his lips. "There aren't words to describe how grateful I am for them. They have taken me in at no small cost to themselves."

"We said earlier that it was worth it," Fjord said, actually managing to look at him straight-on.

"That all aside," Marion added, reaching to the bowl for a sliver of fruit, "Politics, countries, favors... it's not as wonderful as having someone or someones who cares about you. Who you can go to, when you're struggling. You're very fortunate to have so many of them right here."

Caleb reached up and put his hand on Essek's, and Essek studied them, thinking. Such a strange pair they were, human and drow, Empire and Dynasty. Even so, the kinship he felt with Caleb --

It surged, then. Caleb had held him, with unforeseen and unmemorized tenderness, when he confessed about the beacon. Caleb touched his hand at breakfast, in the ship. Caleb had hugged him, about the spell for Veth. Caleb threw away the entire Kryn Dynasty for him.

"They are all very caring," he said, and looked up at Caleb, admiring his blue eyes and the red hair messily pulled back. No one in Den Theylss would ever look so perfect in disarray. In Den Theylss you were tailored, dressed, cut, suited, and arranged in your part. You did not have stray red strands falling over your face.

"Aren't we?" Jester asked, looking up at her with her bright smile and the unending warmth. He knew where she had gotten it from. He wondered what he'd gotten, from Denmother Theylss.

Marion turned from him, after a while, and began to ask Fjord questions about defending Jester, which made Fjord sit up very straight and answer in a very-unFjord formal way. Essek watched this for a while, trying to understand her sudden intensity. It was not like when Denmother Theylss did not approve of him; that he knew. That always felt hard and cold, like a weight in his chest. This was warmer, sharper, different.

"We're all lucky that she'll go after Fjord first, if something happened," Caleb said, in his ear, teasing, "Do not waste the headstart."

Essek chuckled, even if he didn't wholly understand. It was a courtship, but it was not like any of the courtships that were ever suggested to him. Den Theylss had been strict about partners, even if it wasn't the law.

"I promise," Fjord was saying, "I know we've gone to some frankly insane places, but Jester's in great shape, and it's because of all of us."

"And especially you," Marion said.

"And especially Fjord," Jester agreed, and Marion seemed to be satisfied with that. "I'm going to see if Beau's passed out yet. Mama, can we stay?"

"Of course. How many rooms did you need?"

"Well, Caleb and Essek can have one room," Jester said, and Caleb stared, bright spots of red appearing on his cheeks. Jester barrelled through his stammered protest. "And me and Beau and Yasha, and Veth and Yeza, and Fjord and Caduceus."

"We certainly have that. Are you coming to the show tonight?"

"Of course!"

Marion took Jester into a long hug. A sigh of relief swept through both of them.

He wondered what that moment was like. 

Then Jester was flying out of the room, and Fjord following her, leaving just him and Caleb and Marion, who was studying him again. It should have been uncomfortable, but something about it was less so.

"Ah, we're roommates now," Caleb said, his voice strangely even, "I hope you don't snore."

"Not that I have been told."

"Essek," Marion said, and she leaned over the table just a little. She was beautiful, but he could not help but prefer blue eyes and red hair and something slightly less polished, like a red strand falling over a pale face. Something hard, strange in her eyes, came over her. For a second she looked impossibly sad, and he wanted to, in some way, bring her comfort. "What your -- mother did to you is unconscionable."

He couldn't help but laugh. It was a strange relief. He didn't need to comfort her about it. It was just how things were. It was how things had gone.

"I appreciate your thoughts, Marion, but my family is -- was --" It felt strange in his mouth, all of a sudden. Then Caleb squeezed his hand and it felt like that hand was directly on his spine, straightening it. "--had you known my mother, this would not have been unexpected or surprising in the least."

Her face smoothed. The frown did not suit her at all. "No matter if you came of her or not," she said, "You are not obligated to her, and especially now. It seems to me a much better family has already found you."

"Indeed they have," Caleb said, immediately, and looked at him. Blue eyed and red hair and that familiar, perfect voice, easing the tension in his chest, breaking up the block of it. "And anyone who dislikes that has a lot of us to go through."

Marion seemed satisfied by this response. A more comfortable smile appeared, and she stood. When they stood as well, she guided them to the door of her room. "My Jester should have a room key for you. Simply let me know if you need to stay another day."

The three of them walked downstairs. Beauregard was playing a card game with now-appeared Veth, who was, Essek noticed, avidly cheating, swapping cards in and out of a dress pocket. Given that Beauregard couldn’t sit up without Jester holding her, it seemed likely it would be noticed. Yasha was talking to Candeceus and Fjord in a low voice, and Caduceus was nodding along. 

"Do you want to get shitfaced with Beau?" Caleb asked, "We could do some more shopping."

"If there is some time," Essek said, "I was thinking we could have a lesson. I imagine that there's less downtime during adventuring than there is waiting for clothes to be sewn."

Every mote of Caleb brightened, and Essek felt impossibly, almost achingly light. "A magic lesson?"

He nodded, and then he was walking over to Jester. "Could we have our room key?" he asked.

"Oh, are you and Caleb going to have some alone time?" she said, in a teasing voice, dangling it in front of him.

"I don't know what kind of opportunity there will be for lessons," he said, taking it, "So we shouldn't waste the opportunity."

"Lessons," Jester replied, in a sing-song voice.

"Are they fuck lessons?" Beauregard asked, and every one of them stared at her.

There was a long silence.

"They are dunamancy lessons," he said.

"Sounds like fucking to me," Beauregard said, and turned back to the card game.

Caleb didn't meet his eyes when they walked up the steps to the room. Essek closed the door behind them.


	6. anew

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caleb put his hand on Essek's shoulder. Caleb's hand had a particular feel to it, larger in the way that his human hands were, warm. Through his ragged clothes Essek could feel the slight pressure. "This is a good family, if you're looking to try again."

It was a beautiful little room, made better by how Caleb brushed through it to immediately close the blinds and leave it a much more comfortable darkness of lit candles. It had a beautiful vanity desk, and Essek pulled his spellbook from the demiplane, letting the disguise clothes fall away as he opened it. What a relief, to see the familiar scrawls of his own hand.

"When things are going to shit," Caleb said, sitting next to him, "The magic always seems so comforting, doesn't it?"

Essek nodded. There was an ease, to being here, with Caleb. An impossible, unfamiliar ease, that raised his hackles almost as much as it released some of the tension in his shoulders. He brushed his fingers over the pages and flipped through. Certainly nothing that was going to significantly damage the room, for teaching. But Caleb was brilliant. He could handle powerful magic and understand the complexity behind the spell.

Easy to fall into the questions and answers. To listen to Caleb nod and ask more questions, to watch the thoughts flitter through Caleb's head, the way his deep brow furrowed further in concentration. Things had gone to shit and Caleb was sitting next to him, asking thoughtful questions about dunamancy. Maybe it was an adequate trade, after all.

"Is this the only book you have?" Caleb asked, as he turned a page, "Your other books are still in your tower?"

"I have a few others," he said, "I have a small demiplane where I keep my most valuable, most powerful artifacts."

"We are a bit busy, right now, but we could recover any others from Rosohna."

Essek looked up from the spellbook. He could see the little gears in Caleb's mind working. They arranged themselves in perfect alignments like little orrery planets, creating perfect constellations of thoughts. "It will take the Dynasty a while to recover anything of value, and they'll know my things will be guarded. I can recover them in time, when I am better prepared." Then he smiled, because even though things were a mess, he was studying with Caleb, "You want to spend time with me so you can read my books."

"That cannot be held against me," Caleb said.

For a while they talked more about dunamancy, and he found himself appreciating Caleb's skill more and more. He could see the ease in which Caleb could manipulate the strings of fate, of gravity, of time. He watched with growing amazement just the way Caleb could pull on the weave of the world to make it do what he wanted. Had Caleb attended the Conservatory, he would have been considered a genius.

They would have studied together, for sure. All the private tutors he had might have been shared with Caleb. Those lonely sessions where dunamancy held him so close, felt so warm in it's strange way, might have been accompanied by Caleb leaning in, asking just the right questions about the fabric of creating magic. Caleb came included with the fundamentals; he must have attended some magical schooling from the Assembly that he loathed, at some point. 

Denmother Theylss had seen how capable he could be, in the name of his family. Once she had noticed, she had pulled him away from the Conservatory and given him the best tutors to be found in Xorhas. Had she resented him them, in all the ways she always did? Perhaps she had still expected to him to be something else - someone else - other than what he was.

"And I wasn't even a particularly good Theylss, even then," he found himself saying, and then sat back in the chair in surprise, realizing he'd let the thought out.

“You are clearly the best one," Caleb said, almost dismissively, as if this was idle conversation and they were not discussing his half-interrupted thought about his family, that was now gone.

"You never met any of them, really," Essek replied, "Unless you met my brother, at Bazzoxan?"

Caleb looked looked up from the spellbook, tilting his head, "I wasn't aware that you had a brother."

"You never asked." Essek smiled. "You only asked if I was married and had children, of which I was honest about on both counts."

"A rare gift, your honesty."

He couldn't help but chuckle at that. If only Caleb knew what his web of lies looked like, stretching back from before he was even born. He had barely been a child at the time he learned the value of a good lie. He had barely been a child and already dunamancy had made sense to him, long before the other children. He had already been asking questions that Denmother Theylss disliked, even back then. 

"My brother, Verin, might have been at Bazzoxan at the time you were there, looking for Yasha," he said, after a moment, "He was, is, a much better Theylss than I. Honor and glory and Dynasty importance are valuable to him. He has a strong sense of righteousness. A hero, in these times." His eyes went back to the book, idly, tracing over his familiar sigils. Verin would cut him in twain without a second thought, if they met now. The last time they had met, Verin had been chastising him about his disdain regarding potential courtships and partners.

"I don't think we met him," Caleb said, "But he sounds unbearable."

The laugh surprised him, and, it seemed, Caleb. A quirk of a smile hung on Caleb's mouth. 

"Given this explanation," he continued, "And the brief interaction we had with your mother, I consider not having met your family a blessing."

"Verin was frustrating," Essek said, and he thought of all the fights they had, and all the stupid arguments, and then couldn't help but remember those few moments where they would sit together, looking out into Rosohna, knowing that they would be brothers for a long, long time, -- "but he is - was - my brother. As for the Denmother -- I had no other lives and no other mothers. So no matter what she did to me, she was who she was."

Caleb put his hand on Essek's shoulder. Caleb's hand had a particular feel to it, larger in the way that his human hands were, warm. Through his ragged clothes Essek could feel the slight pressure. "This is a good family, if you're looking to try again."

He brought his hand up and let it rest on stop of Caleb's. Dark and light, his narrow fingers over Caleb's broad ones. Caleb's hands were worn, with a missed smudge of dirt under the nails, and his were polished and fine. "There aren't words for how appreciative I am."

"You don't need words with me, friend," Caleb said.

Essek opened his mouth to speak, paused, felt a lump in his chest, and swallowed. He focused on the little wrinkles of Caleb's hand under his, to concentrate. "Should I take you up on your offer to become a Widogast, are there siblings or parents I should be aware of?"

This was, quite obviously, the wrong question to ask. A barely-perceptible shiver ran through Caleb's fingers, and his eyes flickered, the gentle ease of his entire posture going away.

"If it is --" he started again, and all of the calm and comfort had disappeared from the room, "-- of course it was not intended to pry---" he knew that Caleb had suffered, idiot, and he had felt so at ease to go barging into it, and how would you like it if someone had idly, teasingly asked about his family, "--do not feel obligated to---"

"There are no other Widogasts," Caleb said, softly, but intensely. His fingers were digging into Essek's shoulder. It should have hurt and it didn't. "There never were."

Essek stared at him, his fingers pressing into Caleb's. He tried to get a look at those eyes, as if that would help him understand. He had seen pain there, from the first time they had met. He had always known Caleb to be a person who had suffered. You did not become a person like Caleb, without suffering.

"Caleb Widogast was made when I met Veth, a little before we all-- before the Mighty Nein was born." Caleb said, staring straight at the desk, barely blinking. There was a faint tremble in the hand that held his shoulder. "I was... someone else, before that. A person I'm not, now."

Oh.

Whatever had happened - whoever it happened to - was gone. If Caleb, if the person Caleb had been, had a family --- they were not Caleb's family, not Widogasts. They would not be Essek's family, if he decided to be a Widogast.

He let his his hand fall from Caleb's so he could bend forward, trying even harder now to try and see those eyes. Instead, Caleb stood from the desk, leaving a cold spot where he had been touching, and walked over to stare out the window of the room. He seemed aeons away, Essek thought. He seemed further away than the distant horizon, than the point where gravity pulled you, than the edge of time.

Essek waved his spellbook back into it's demiplane. He stood as well, wondering how such impassable crevasses could be crossed.

"If you met me tomorrow," he said to Caleb's back, to the mess of his tied-back hair and his shirt and the buckle of the leather binding he used to hold his books, "I would have said the same thing, about everything you know about me. I don't even know if I would’ve called myself Essek."

There was a silence. He watched Caleb's shoulders rise and fall with his breathing.

"You have had dealings with Trent Ikithon, in your talks with the Assembly," Caleb said, to the closed windows rather than him. It was not quite a question, but there was a pause. 

"Yes."

"He is responsible for the death of the boy I was, and everything that boy had. They all are. But him, primarily."

He had primarily spoken to Ludinus, about the beacon, but there had been Ikithon, an old, sallow human with a particularly unpleasant look in his eye. There had been Vess DeRogna, who seemed more interested in dissecting him than talking to him. From what he knew of Ludinus, it wasn't hard to imagine how vicious his compatriots could be. You had to be vicious, to avoid being crushed by Ludinus Da'leth. If he permitted you to stay, you had to be rotten to the core.

"Let me help you punish him," he said, and he saw Caleb's head move with a nod.

Finally Caleb's body moved with another big sigh, and he turned back to Essek. Essek could feel the brittleness of how he held himself together. He wanted -- he wanted to do anything, to make that brittleness go away. He wanted everything and he hardly knew what it was.

"More studying?" Caleb said, as he came back over, even if he still felt an abyss away. Essek nodded, and sat back down at the chair, pulling his spellbook out.

“Whatever happened to that man,” Essek said, even though he knew he shouldn’t have, even though he should have let it rest, even though he should have been grateful for everything that he _did_ get, “I am quite fond of this one and find him marvelous. And he has a wonderful family.” 

“Yes,” Caleb said, but it was hollow and half-effort. There was a pause, and then Caleb did finally look at him, haunted. “It would be better, with you in it.” 

“Of course,” he said, and with only an immense amount of mental strength could he turn himself back to the pages, and concentrate on the sigils he’d written there. 

At some point he was startled by a knock on the door.

"Are you guys naked?" Jester's voice sing-songed through, "Are you going to come down for dinner?"

Caleb looked up from his own spellbook from where he was copying a spell. He shook himself out of the magic-trance that Essek knew very well and cleared his throat. "We are studying, Jester," he said, and then he went over and opened the door.

Jester strolled into their room, took him in - still sitting at the desk, which now had a few of his books on it - and looked back at Caleb.

"Dinner is soon so if you're coming don't be late!" she said, and then she was gone again, in a flash of blue and green.

"I am not all that hungry," Caleb said, turning to him once he had closed the door again, "But it’s rude, not to join your family for dinner."

"If you don't join Den Theylss," Essek said, standing up and disappearing the books away, "You hear about it for a long time, about how you are a terrible son."

"If you don’t go to dinner with the Mighty Nien, they assume you are fucking.”

"It doesn't seem like skipping dinner is a requirement for that,' he said, but he twitched his fingers and brought up the clothes-disguise nonetheless.

Only after he had closed the door did he hear the sounds of the crowd below. A glance down a railing to see that the place was quite full, at this hour. People wearing fine clothes were being served beautiful-looking meals.

He froze. The shimmering thought of the dark-skinned elf he could pretend to be came to mind. No one down there was drow. It might be possible there wasn’t another drow within a thousand miles. 

It was not that he was in danger. There was no one in this town that was a threat to him, other than Yussa. He was certain he didn’t care that any of these pointless, worthless strangers thought he was a drow. Yet, some anxiety crept up his hairline. 

He squared his shoulders and set his jaw. These people were nothing, no one. They were not even the Dynasty council. He had nothing to fear from them and nothing to prove to them. It was no different from showing up any council meeting where he was unwanted and could not be denied. 

No different, and his feet didn’t move. 

Caleb must have noticed he stopped, because he had turned around, walked back to him, and taken his hand. “We would protect you,” he said. 

“I am not afraid,” Essek answered. What was this dread, that he failed to enunciate? That made him think maybe it was better, to pretend to look like something he wasn’t? What was the meaning of this ache in his chest, that locked his feet to the floor? 

Caleb looked at him, and stepped closer, and Essek could see the red stubble growing along his jaw. For a moment the ache eased. "If someone has something to say to you," he said, firm and confident, "They can say it to all of us."

He nodded, suppressing the fidget. Caleb let his hands fall as Essek lifted his chin. He longed for his mantle. They kept walking. He had to focus, to keep contact with the ground.

The Mighty Nein took up a table in the corner: the six of them, and Yeza, and a tiny halfling boy that must have been Veth and Yeza's child. They were already shouting over each other, arguing about foods they liked to eat. Beauregard, he was sure, had spent the whole day drunk. Yasha and Fjord, based on taking them in, were well into the worst part of day drinking. Conservatory classmates that he never could connect to appeared in his mind.

He felt the stares from the rest of the patrons. They didn’t feel as different as he expected. The more things changed, the more they stayed the same. Strange comforts.

"You came out of your room!" Veth said, smiling, "How did all the studying go?"

"Very good," Caleb said, and they sat next to each other, with Caduceus on Essek's other side and Beauregard next to Caleb, "Essek has some secret books that he took with him, that he's been showing me."

"Books!" Beauregard said, leaning forward to look around Caleb at him. Her eyes were bright eyes, "Anything cool, fun, interesting, neat, worth exploring?"

"Maybe when you are less drunk," he said. A server, evidently polite enough to at least pretend not to stare at him, gave him a plate.

So, he thought, as he listened to the group talk amongst each other, there were no other Widogasts. A Widogast was -- not a birth name. Widogasts were not born; they were made. They had been constructed out of the ashes of somebody else. 

What was he, other than that? What was this new person, Essek of-No-Den-or-Family? Was he _not_ whatever remained, once someone else had stripped it all away? It sounded like a Widogast to him. 

Ikithon had seemed loathsome in their meetings. To know how that he had conspired with someone so treacherous, someone who had damaged Caleb in such a way that he had become Caleb - it ached. He did not deserve Caleb, knowing that in some way had assisted to create the war Caleb had worked so hard to stop. He did not deserve any of them, really. What he deserved was Veth’s anger, which he knew she restrained. He deserved the way Yeza wouldn’t look at him. What he deserved was to wander alone, Essek of-no-den-or-family, in the vast sea of unfamiliar people and their pointless politics.

He startled, when he was gently shoved. Caduceus was looking at him, in his knowing way. He certainly did not deserve Caduceus’ drive to move forward. 

“Have you ever been to Uthodurn?” Caduceus asked. 

“No,” he said, “The Dynasty has not had much dealings with them.” 

“It’s underground, so it won’t be that uncomfortable for you,” Yasha said, “But you can still wear your cool glasses.” 

“Are you not hungry, Essek?” Jester asked. He looked down at his plate, which was still mostly full of unfamiliar foods. He was sure they were delicious, in a place like this, and he forced himself to pick up the fork.

"Oh, yes," he said, and began to eat, because it was rude not too, and the least you could do for someone - a group of someones, who threw away their diplomatic power to rescue you and then took you to meet their mother, who loved them - was eat the dinner that was served to you at the inn.

"It's been a rough few days for him, Jester," Caleb was saying, as he was concentrating on every shift of his jaw, to make sure he chewed. He didn't taste the food, really. He was sure that it was delicious, but no part of his mind was paying attention to it. It was spinning in a hundred different ways. Thinking about Den Theylss, about dinner, about Denmother Theylss, about who Caleb was before he was Caleb, that he had assisted, in some way, the man who destroyed whoever Caleb had been, the way the ground felt on his march to the Bloodroot tree, the ritual unmaking of his family bonds, the casual creation of something that tried to stand in for that ---

"Hey," said Caduceus, on his other side, bent to look at him, "It doesn't have to be okay. You don't have to be hungry."

"Yes," he said, although he wasn't quite sure what he agreed with, "It has been a trying few days."

"Well," Jester added, "You'll feel better after you watch Momma. She's about to start and her voice is the most beautiful thing in all of the Menagerie Coast. I mean, I know you saw her before, but like, not really, because Veth poisoned you.” 

“I was distracted before that, given that you were there at all.” Essek said, “But being poisoned very much takes your attention away from a show.” 

“You had it coming,” Veth said, sitting up. 

He ate, for the basic definition of eating. He could feel Caleb looking at him, when Veth wasn't talking to him. He could feel them all keeping an eye on him, even when they tried to hide it. He could feel Yeza pointedly not looking at him, eyes carefully skipping over from Caleb to Caduceus when he had to look over at their side of the table.

A hush fell over the conversation of the room as he saw Marion come down from the steps. Now that he wasn’t busy watching Caleb, he could actually take her in in her finery. She was beautiful, in the long, shimmering gown that she wore. He had been entertained before, like this, although then he had loathed it. Dreaded it, even, wishing he could be back in his tower. That person he had been, when they had had the best entertainers in Xorhas or further, he had wanted nothing more to leave.

He wasn't even sure what he wanted, now. He wanted Caleb to keep sitting next to him. He wanted -- he wanted to keep his promise, to protect Jester. He wanted...

Marion opened her mouth to sing and now that he could hear it, it eased his woes. The words were unfamiliar but they were beautiful, and they curled around him like warm arms, like the magnificent sense of learning something new, like the easy calm of his study in the perfectly dark days of Rosohna. He thought of that day they had come over for breakfast, and Jester had told him to get better pastries, and Caleb had showed him notes from the archmage Halas himself.

They had finished a spell created by the archmage. Caleb had not asked for anything, had not made any demands, had not given it with some stipulation or condition. Was that what it was like, to have friends? It was like to have friends when they offered him a parasol in the heat of the jungle. It was like to have friends when they were steadfast and loyal like Fjord was, when they were intense and blunt and strange-wise, like Beauregard.

He thought of how Veth - Nott, at the time - had looked, when she had seen Yeza. How foolish he thought she was, at that moment. Such an idiot little goblin, that all they wanted for a Luxon Beacon was this starved little halfing. What an idiot he had been. What a selfish, unthinking idiot.

He thought about the way Caduceus looked at him, could look at anyone. Caduceus had said 'if he has to say it, he won't like how it sounds.' He wondered what else Caduceus had said to them. How clearly he could see Caduceus saying something to Caleb and Caleb nodding, having no response. 

He thought about Yasha on the deck of the Ball Eater. She had said _I ran away too. But I have this family now, and they're better. I'm used to running away, but ... I'm trying not to, this time._ It was easy to imagine Yasha as a solitary hunter, vicious-quick and deadly. To see her laugh at some joke Jester told was different and unusual and, in some new way he did not yet understand, beautiful.

He obviously wasn't a Lavorre or a Brenatto, the way they looked at each other. He was no tribeswoman, no Clay, and -- Fjord had still contributed nothing, about his origins. But a Widogast....

Caleb was watching Marion sing, next to him. Caleb, who had been someone else, to whom something terrible had happened. Something so terrible that that person had died, and Caleb had been made. A part of him wanted to know those things, and a part of them wished he never knew, so Caleb could forget them. A part of him wanted to forget Denmother Theylss' chanting voice and the weight of the Den Theylss guards dragging him along and the wet dirt on his knees and the smell of iron from the Bloodroot tree.

Caleb had known all those things Essek had done, had thought, had wanted, had said. Caleb knew him so utterly, so completely, so thoroughly. 

What else could it mean, to be a Widogast? To have things ripped from you. To learn, alone, until...

Until some idiots came along, ruining your plans, being unapologetically and impossibly kind despite everything. Until some idiots invited you to dinner, gave you a parasol, an ancient spell, a vial of distilled dunamis. Until they kissed your forehead. Until they rescued you from an imminent death.

He was startled from his thoughts by a sharp pain shooting up his leg. He had been kicked. He looked around sharply and Fjord was offering him a handkerchief.

He was puzzled, and then he realized his face was wet.

"Thank you," he whispered, and Fjord gave him an acknowledging nod.

Marion was still singing, coming down from her crescendo. When she finished there was a round of stunned clapping that got louder, as people came out from their trances. He was not the only one with tears on his face.

"She's so beautiful," Jester said, softly.

"Yeah," Beauregard agreed. It was the most restrained she'd been in hours. "Jester, your mom is the best."

"I know."

"I never get bored of it," Yeza said, holding his child in his lap.

"Right?" Jester said.

"It's nice to be able to come here between adventures," Caleb said. Yasha nodded.

"It's good to have a home," Caduceus said.

"I think I"m going to do some more studying," Essek said, finally gathering himself. He left the handkerchief on the table, offering Fjord another grateful nod, "Unless there are.... other plans?"

The Nein all looked at each other. They seemed to communicate without speaking. Something - after a moment he was certain it was, unbelievably, longing - appeared in his chest.

"I'll come with you," Caleb said, which were the four best words Essek could have heard at the time.

"Don't be too loud," Veth said, teasing, "You might have neighbors in the rooms around you."

"Studying is not a loud activity," Caleb deadpanned, and Beauregard snickered. Essek stood, folding his arms behind his back and keeping his feet on the ground. Caleb was next to him, just where he liked Caleb to be. Together they walked back up the stairs and back to the room.

When Caleb closed the door to the room, Essek let out a long, deep sigh that went all the way to the magical marrow of his soul. He twitched the disguise off and let the ratty bits of his clothes fall around his arms, and let himself hover over to the study chair.

"It has been a long day for you," Caleb said, sitting on the other chair they had left and looking down at him. Even with the hover he was an average height for a drow, which meant you only had to be an average height for a human to look down at him.

"No truer words have been said," he responded. With a thought he was reaching for the book out of nowhere and feeling it's weight in his hand again. He took in another deep breath, trying to let himself settle. "But it is only one day in what I imagine will be many like it. I presume that dinner is always like that."

"Eventually you will find it strange when it isn't," Caleb said, just the slightest twitch of a smile on the corner of his mouth.

Essek flipped open the book with a thought, the pages settling. He made the candle glow with the faint hum of magic so they could read the words and allow the room to be comfortably dark. This didn't seem the time or the place to do much practical spellwork - he wondered what that place and time would look like, really - but there was plenty of theoretical background, and Caleb was an exquisite student. There was something absolutely magnificent about how when Caleb leaned in to brush their shoulders together and Essek could feel the fabric of his shirt through his rags. He could feel the warmth of Caleb's skin, and slight brush of the hairs on his arm when they touched. Unfamiliar, spectacular texture.

As they talked they moved closer, until his leg was up against Caleb's, and each touch meant some slide of clothes and skin on clothes and skin, and sometimes Caleb would move close enough to talk that Essek could smell the faint wine on his breath. Their hands overlapped over diagrams and patterns; he would point to some explanation and Caleb's hand would come next, tracing the pattern left by his finger.

Certainly Caleb must have known this feeling, when you were deep into a spectacular problem or a mysterious spell or an unfinished book, and time was your servant, to be discarded until you were finished.

Eventually he heard Caleb yawn, evidently despite himself. He heard Caleb yawn and he felt Caleb shift next to him, and then with another breath Caleb put his head on Essek's shoulder and closed his eyes.

"There's a bed," he said, with reluctance he did not understand. Caleb's head was a strange, wonderful weight, the small strands of his hair tickling skin.

Caleb forced himself upright and nodded. Reluctantly, he stood from the chair and was gathering blankets and pillows and throwing them on the ground. Essek watched him for a moment before he realized. Caleb did actually sleep -- he looked around for a place to trance -- but maybe that would be uncomfortable, to be sitting in the way that they were taught, and there was no reason he couldn't lie in the bed, if that would make Caleb more comfortable - but that seemed unfair, he didn't even need to sleep, really, and he was taking up the bed when Caleb would have preferred it, but obviously Caleb wished to give it to him, and it seemed intensely rude to reject it ---

He yanked himself out of the circle with a shake of his head. "It's a large bed," he said, "I don't move in my sleep."

"You've been through a lot," Caleb said, without looking at him, working on his makeshift nest. It didn't look uncomfortable, but certainly vastly less comfortable than the mattress, "You don't need me disturbing your rest."

"You have never disturbed me, and it seems quite unlikely you would start now."

"I am a terrible sleeper and I don't need to kick you."

"Caleb," Essek said, and he hid the spellbook and came over, picking up the nest of blanket sand putting them back on the bed to Caleb's noise of disapproval, "You have risked your life and thrown away the favor of a powerful empire for me. The bed is large enough for two of us by half."

Caleb froze and for a second the clenching fear of overstepping surged all over Essek. He thought of Den Theylss again, of their permanent disapproval, of their demands for moderation in every way. His muscles clenched in the blankets and for a moment thought to throw them back on the floor.

"Ja, if you insist," Caleb said, and then he sat on the side of the bed, still facing away from Essek, and began to unlace his boots. The icy feeling stayed in Essek's chest, but he had gotten what he wanted, sort of, even though he was not sure that he wanted it. Caleb crawled into one side and rolled onto his side, folding away from Essek and showing him only the slope of his neck and the red of his hair and the top of his shirt, and then Essek laid in the bed on his side, feeling utterly out of place.

Here he was, laying in a bed, thousands of miles away from his home that had been taken from him. Drow would laugh at him tracing while laying down, wonder if he was doing some human joke. And wasn't he? Only it wasn't a joke. Caleb had obviously wanted him to have the bed, so he had it.

Essek closed his eyes and tried to let the quiet of the trance take him. He felt oddly vulnerable, laying down. He thought about Caleb, and Denmother Theylss, and Yasha, and the Bright Queen, and Marion, and Caleb again. He thought about how there were no other Widogasts. Eventually even his own mind got tired of the circles.


	7. good morning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He closed the door silently behind him, looking over the railing outside their bedroom. He saw the familiar backs of Beauregard - dark hair and dark skin and blue clothes - and Fjord, who was flopped inelegantly over the bar, face in his arms and stripped out of his armor. Fjord was heaving.

It was not much after dawn when Essek stirred from the trance. A long one. When was the last time, he had been tranced for so long? He usually found it something to be forced into - something to get over with, so he could resume his work. But he had no work, not like he used to. He was going wherever the Mighty Nein was going, on whatever schedule they wished to go there.

For a second he was confused, that he was laying down, and then he let it all flood into him, one moment after another. The Bloodroot Tree - Jester's voice and the rescue - the Ball Easter - Marion, Jester's mother.

Caleb. Caleb, in this bed. Essek wasn't stupid. He knew what it meant, what it looked like. A flash of horror sat him up, glancing at the door. He'd have to leave, if Jester or Beauregard came in. It would be too much ridicule to bear.

There Caleb was, asleep. Some of the normal tension was smoothed out of his face. His shoulders were relaxed under the white shirt, his hair attempting a valiant escape of the tie that held it. No Theylss could ever look like him, at ease, even untended to, made defenseless by sleep. No drow, even. No one ever looked like Caleb Widogast.

What was this feeling, the temptation to touch? To feel the warmth that radiated from his skn through his clothes? To pull away a stray red strand that fell out of Essek's view, perhaps across his face? To feel the even heat of his breathing and the calm pulse of his heart.

Caleb, who more than the rest of them had extended his hand, his whole self, his friendship. Who had, when Essek had asked him to be impressed, conjured a massive cat's claw and used it to open the door of his gifted house. Who had touched his arm in a strange marsh, half-apology, half-tease. Who had knelt to him and kissed his forehead. _You were not born with venom in your veins._

He clenched his hands into fists. Better for him to escape, should he let one of these awry gestures free from its chains. Easy to slip out of the bed and disguise his rags. He thought longingly of the clothing that that tailor was making him. He closed the door silently behind him, looking over the railing outside their bedroom. He saw the familiar backs of Beauregard - dark hair and dark skin and blue clothes - and Fjord, who was flopped inelegantly over the bar, face in his arms and stripped out of his armor. Fjord was heaving.

He took a breath and walked downstairs. Beauregard turned and waved him over.

"How'd you sleep?" she asked, as he sat down on the other side of her from Fjord, who was taking up at least two spaces in his sprawl.

"Fine, thank you," he said, "And you?"

"Well, I feel like shit, but that's how life goes." She patted Fjord on the back, who made a low moan of pain. "You can't miss the morning run, especially mostly to punish Fjord."

"Hi," Fjord said, into his arms, and then with a great amount of apparent effort sat up and took him in. "Morning, Essek."

"Good morning, Fjord."

"Oh, it's definitely not."

"The morning exercises are hard on you?" he asked, and Fjord nodded.

"We gotta toughen him up," Beauregard said, leaning in conspiratorial towards him and away from Fjord, "If he's going to become a knight in shining armor, there's gotta be rippling muscles, you know what I mean? Rippling pecs. Absolutely massive thighs. You know."

He nodded. "You've been very impressive with the sword," He said, around her, and Fjord brightened at that, "I bet the stronger you'll get, the more impressive you'll be."

"I should have taken up being a wizard," Fjord said, "Everything doesn't absolutely pulse with agony to better your skills."

"You obviously have a grasp for magic," he said, "If you were interested, I would be happy to study with you."

"That's nice of you, but I don't really think it's my jam." Fjord stood, groaning in complaint, "I'm going to go wash. I'll be back."

They watched his back disappear. Beauregard turned back to him and narrowed her eyes. "So let's get one thing clear and out of the way while I've got you to myself," she said, voice low with threat, "If you ever hurt one hair on Caleb's head, I will literally punch your head directly off your shoulders and use it as a doorstop. We're clear on that, right?"

Essek startled back into his chair. A hot flash of anger surged through him, and he felt the magic shimmering at his fingertips. Beauregard wouldn't have defeated him, if it was just them. Oh, she'd hurt him, but he'd only need one or two spells, and despite her strength she was a slave to gravity just like anyone else.

But it was not -- it was a threat. But it was not a threat-threat. Had Beauregard wanted him dead or at least badly bruised, she would have done it right here, while Caleb wasn't there to stop her. She would have heard him coming, he suspected, and been ready when he sat down.

"You have badly misread me if you think I'm going to hurt Caleb," he said, trying to keep his voice cool.

Beauregard sneered at him. "I don't think that's true at all, but you can believe that if it makes you feel better." With her typical skill, she unfolded from the barstool and slipped behind the bar, taking in the inventory, "But anyway, I just wanted to get that out there."

"Should I end up hurting Caleb, I would be hurting myself more than you could ever hurt me," he said, turning to watch her as she took a sniff of a bottle, than poured herself a glass of something clear. Water or something like it, based on the lack of smell from his end.

"You couldn't have given a better answer if you tried," She took a gulp of her glass, then poured him on. It was water, with some kind of pleasant fizz that buzzed on his tongue and down his throat.

"You're very protective of him," he said. They weren't as strange a pair as him and Caleb, but they were certainly a pair. They had both worn those ridiculous harnesses in the throne room, and later argued together on behalf of peace.

"Empire kids, man," Beauregard said, and Essek couldn't stop his eyebrow from quirking up, "We both have all our own complicated fucking feelings about the Empire. But it's what we are, in our own weird ways. And Caleb, you know, Caleb needs someone to care about him. And he's the kind of guy who calls you out on your shit, you know?"

"I certainly know that," he said, and he could feel where the kiss had burned into his skin, and Beauregard smirked at him again, her eyes flicking to that spot in his forehead.

"So. Yeah, I guess I am. Protective of him, I mean. But he’d say the same thing to you - I mean, he’d probably threaten to turn you to ash, not punch your head off, but it’s the same thing, if you were obviously crushing so hard on me."

He felt lucky that the dark skin hid the flush in his face. "I am not," he managed, trying to keep his voice level, "I find him a wonderful student, and an impressive man in an almost unbelievable number of ways."

"Sure you do."

He took another drink of water instead. Fjord came out from the steps, looking freshly washed and a little less haggard.

"My turn for the shower," she said, and patted Essek on the shoulder, disappearing. Fjord took her seat and drank from her glass, watching her.

"Did she threaten you?" he asked.

Essek nodded.

"Well, I'm glad you didn't do some fancy gravity magic on her.'

"I thought about it," he said, and let the hint of a smile creep onto his mouth, "But she meant well. And nothing she could do to me would be worse than how I would punish myself, should I permit some harm to come to Caleb."

"I said that too."

He watched Fjord open the bottle Beauregard had taken, sniff it, and pour himself more water. Even though Fjord was small for his blood, he was unmistakably orcish. He didn't hide. Beauregard had said her and Caleb were from the Empire; that would leave Fjord as from the Menagerie Coast, or less possibly across the ocean. He wondered what it was like, to grow up in this place where he was an outsider. What did they say to Fjord, about his green skin and tusks?

And even so Fjord was capable and thoughtful. He had not permitted whatever had happened - if anything had happened, though it seemed so unlikely nothing had - to harden him. Although, he mused, Fjord had come to Rosohna speaking one way and started speaking another way a little while after.

"Fjord, if it is not rude of me," he began, and Fjord looked at him, waiting, "When you came to Rosohna with the beacon, you spoke differently."

"That's true," Fjord said, "I thought you might ask."

"I figured if you wanted to share with an outsider like me, you would have. But I suppose if I'm trying to be less one of one..."

"I don't mind talking about it," Fjord said, so casually that Essek envied his ability to not mind, "To make a long story very, very short, when we met I... I was imitating someone I admired and respected and wanted to be, and after that I realized that while that person had really been important to me, instead of trying to be them, I should try to be my own person. So I stopped using their accent and went back to how I actually talk."

"Did something happen, that caused you to realize that?" he asked.

Fjord looked away. He could see the memory playing back in his mind, clear as the sun shining into the windows. "Something did happen," he said, "I thought that.... I thought that I was important, powerful, for the wrong reasons. And I wanted to be done with all of it. Fake power, being manipulated, pretending to be something, someone I'm not. So I tossed it all. Into a pit of lava, actually."

"Those are very useful, for getting rid of things."

Fjord chuckled and looked back at him. "They really are. Anyway, that's why I talk like this now and didn't used to. I'll tell you the whole story on the road sometime."

"It seems like a dramatic history is a requirement to being a part of the Mighty Nein," Essek said, refilling his glass. Caleb had been made from someone else's suffering - and Fjord, too, in some way. Veth had been transformed into a goblin. Yasha had been exiled. That left Beauregard - who wore her scars with such intensity he didn't need to ask - Jester, and Caduceus. As for the blue tiefling, certainly no one was disarmingly cheerful without a reason, and for the firbolg -- he hadn't figured out Caduceus, yet. He thought maybe it was sad, to be able to know what other people felt, like Caduceus evidently did. A strange punishment, to know be able to see the weakness of other people. Essek could read it, but he ignored it. He had thought those weaknesses pathetic. Caduceus -- did not.

"No one who's lived a good life becomes a wandering adventurer, as you can attest," Fjord replied.

"I certainly qualify, should a tragic transformational event be required."

Fjord snorted a laugh at that and nodded. "I'm glad you're sticking with us," he said, instead of going into more detail about his tragic transformation event, Essek noted.

"I have nowhere else to be," he responded, instead, letting the subject drop. Fjord hadn't offered a last name or commented on his parents or tried to empathize with him, in one way or another. Fjord was careful and thoughtful, offering him a handkerchief, and private and distant, just as much. In a particular way, Essek admired it

"You don't have other allies?" Fjord asked, "Not the assembly, I hope, but -- you seem to be a pretty impressive wizard, even if you're mostly a solitary worker, you knew Yussa..."

"None that would be interested in taking me in at the risk of the Bright Queen's distaste," Essek said, turning back towards the stairs at footsteps, seeing Beauregard appear, looking washed. "It would be interesting to see if such a network will be a worse threat, knowing the Dynasty no longer supports me."

Fjord pulled back a little from his chair in surprise. "Not a lot of friends, then."

He could feel how thin the smile was on his lips, practically a grimace. "Not a lot, no. At my level, the point of knowing someone else as impressive as you is so they can further your aims. No more, no less. Has -- Yussa -- not told the same thing? Or Ludinus?"

He watched the thoughts work through the half-orc's face.

"So what'd I miss?" Beauregard said, before Fjord could answer.

"We were talking about how Essek makes a good member of the Mighty Nein because he now has the tragic required past that's needed to join the group," he said, instead, and Bearegard nodded immediately, sitting down on Essek's other side.

"We're three for three on that one," she said, grinning at Fjord, then at Essek. She actually leaned a little closer to him, and he had to resist the urge to pull away. "Trust me on this one, Essek. Your parents kicking you out is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. Your mom, uh, obviously, did not have your best interests in mind and was not ready for you to be who you actually are. So obviously the circumstances aren't like, ideal, but this is the beginning of a good new chapter." She paused again, then smiled at him, not quite pleasantly. "Trust me on this one."

Essek took in her dark skin, bright eyes. The now-familiar wraps of her Cobalt Soul vestiges and the taut muscles under them. Beauregard hadn't suffered like Caleb had, he was sure, but she had suffered. She wore that suffering around him as surely as Caleb did.

"Hypothetically speaking?" he asked, matching her not-quite-smile.

"Yeah," Beauregard said, barely not laughing, "A friend told me that your shitty family kicking you out can be the best thing that ever happens to you. Maybe second to you finding some new family that actually gives a shit about who you are and what you want."

Essek took another sip of his water. He stared into the clear liquid and down to the bar below it. What was the best thing that ever happened to him, really? Oh, without question, it had been the moment he had felt the dunamancy, so clear and sharp and malleable, in his fingers. What would be next after that?

"Caleb!" Fjord shouted, looking past him and up to the next level stairwell. Essek turned and saw the red hair and pale skin of the man, who was actually fading quite quickly from alarm and hurrying down the steps.

"Good morning," Caleb said, taking them all in. His eyes went from Essek, to Beauregard, to Fjord. "You weren't in the room when I woke up," he said, "I thought maybe you had been stolen from us by the Kryn."

"Oh," Essek said, and for a moment he forgot that Beauregard and Fjord were there at all. He slid off the seat at the bar, coming over to touch Caleb's arm, "I didn't mean to alarm you. Drow don't require as much rest as humans. They wouldn't have been able to run off with me silently, though, I can assure you that. "

He could have said _you looked so lovely sleeping there, that it was hard to be still_ , or perhaps something like _I wanted to touch you and that felt forward, so I left_. He kept those things to himself. The Bright Queen and Denmother Theylss were, in the most impossible way, safer.

"I don't think it would be worth it to beat the shit out of your mom if we wrecked the Lavish Chateau doing it," Beauregard said, loud even for her, disturbing Essek's thoughts and bringing the rest of the room around Caleb back into focus.

Essek thought of Denmother Theylss and grimaced, suppressing the thought of her being here. There was not much need for her to use that strength, he knew her understanding of the great web of magic and her skill with a blade had been honed in the centuries and lives and centuries and lives of experience. He admired Beauregard very much, and she was powerful, but she was a bright blue gnat, to Denmother Theylss.

He kept that to himself, too. He was already thinking of what he would do, should she arrive. How could he even save them, if Quana couldn't couldn't stop him from being chased?

"The sooner we get going to Uthodurn, the less likely that occurs," Caleb said, not moving from his touch, "We should get some breakfast, gather your clothes, and be on our way."

"Well, then I'll go get Deucy from the room or the garden or wherever he's wandered off to." Fjord stoppered the bottle of water and put it back under the bar, slipping out from behind it, "We're meeting back here?"

Beauregard nodded, "I'll go see if Jester and Yasha are awake and ask Veth if she's done fucking Yeza yet." She turned and headed back up the stairs, leaving just the two of them.


	8. who-was-now

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There they stood, Caleb-who-had-been-someone, Essek-who-had-been-Theylss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks everyone, for coming along with me on this story. if you liked, kudos, commented, reblogged, etc.. i really, really appreciate it! i check the kudos email every day and stop what i'm doing to read the comments. big thanks to cranes for putting the prompt on my dash which inspired this whole story, and huge thanks to darya for the great beta. <3 
> 
> want to talk about shadowgast or CR with me? hit me up on [tumblr](https://iniquiticity.tumblr.com/), or [twitter](https://twitter.com/iniquiticity), at iniquiticity.

Somehow their little table that they sat at seemed heavier, without Beauregard and Fjord. Just Caleb and him, now. Caleb had woken up and though he had been taken.

"I didn't mean to alarm you," he said, again. .

There was a little pause. Then Caleb said, "It's true. You are too capable and much too cautious to be dragged off unawares."

The silence was strange, after that. There was the beginning rumble, somewhere distant, of other staff beginning to wake. If he tried he could hear the sounds of the other members of the Mighty Nein. Right here, it was just him and Caleb.

Caleb, he imagined, must have been a poor sleeper. Some part of you did not die off and become someone else without scars. Essek was well-read enough on sleep to know about dreams - he recalled, even, the snickering conversations drow had about how they were unbothered by them. What did Caleb dream? Did he dream of the person he had previously been? Did he dream of the moment he had offered the beacon back to the Bright Queen and changed Essek's life forever?

Did he dream about the two of them, in the laboratory that was no longer his, working on the transmutation spell with Veth? Did he dream of their studying last night, with their skin brushing against each other?

Did he dream about becoming a Widogast? There was an old joke about dreaming in a different language when you spoke more than one - what would it be like, to dream being a different person?

He was grateful that it was something he could avoid. He wouldn't have to dream about the drow guards dragging him from the tower and hauling him through the mud, his magic suppressed. He wouldn't have to dream about Denmother Theylss looming over him, the rage in her eyes. He wouldn't have to dream of the iron smell of the Bloodroot Tree or the words she uttered, piercing the air with each one. Ripping his family and his people and his city from him.

"Bad dreams?" Caleb asked, interrupting him.

"Drow do not dream," he responded, "And yourself?"

"What a blessing," Caleb said, instead of answering, and touched his hand where it was brushed against him.

"So we often say."

Caleb slid away from him, just a step, and let his eyes drift up the staircase. He was unreadable and distant, and Essek ached, in that moment. How Caleb suffered, he thought. How Caleb so evidently suffered, and Essek supposed that no matter what they did - even if they struck down Ludinus and Trent Ikithon and whoever else had hurt Caleb so much to make him a new man - he would never suffer any less.

No matter what he did, Essek thought, he could not take back that he had been involved, in a way. That he had collaborated with the very people that had destroyed he-who-had-been-Caleb so wholly. There was a dull pulse of an ache to it, in his chest.

He couldn't bring himself to care much about who had the beacon when, but no matter what happened with him, with the dynasty -- he would never be Theylss again. Those people who had been his family, even the family he disliked, would never be his family. The home he had loved, tended to - it was gone from him.

He thought about taking another name, again. It seemed, he thought, an inevitability. Soon he would feel so little like Essek Theylss that even half of it might feel like a costume, and he was sure there would be enough of those in his life without ones that were unrequired.

There they stood, Caleb-who-had-been-someone, Essek-who-had-been-Theylss. Were they both not Widogasts, in their way?

How long had it been, until Caleb told them there had been someone before Caleb? 

He gathered himself and took a step closer. Caleb looked at him, studying. Waiting, evidently, for him to say something.

So he did. "There won't be much time alone once we're on the road, I assume," he said.

Caleb tilted his head, trying to read him. Trying to hear what he maybe though Essek was saying. "We do tend to travel as a group," he said, slow, “Is there something you would prefer privacy for?” 

Caleb disliked the idea of keeping a secret from his friends, but he in so many words was willing to. 

What if he, too, one day disliked keeping information to himself? What if he became a person like Caleb, who shared, who had been changed by these people? Maybe he already was, a little. He certainly felt different even from the drow they'd rescued only a few days prior.

Another breath and he gathered himself. "You offered me the Widogast name, earlier," he said, "And then you tell me that Widogasts are made, not born."

Caleb's expression became smooth. Guarded. It hurt, to feel sealed off from Caleb, but Caleb wasn't interrupting him or telling him to stop or becoming angry. Caleb was listening.

He thought about all those moments when he had been thinking these very thoughts during Marion's performance. When Caleb had told him this story. Where they had studied together, bodies close. When Caleb had leapt to defend him, in the Ball Eater, when he had nearly reduced Jester to nothing.

"It sounds one becomes a Widogast when you are no longer someone you used to be," he said, quietly.

Caleb was still watching him, not looking away. Essek felt pinned by his gaze and fought the urge to squirm.

"Yes," Caleb said, "When you have nothing. When all you know is the hard stone of the floor directly against your body. When you have been left with only the barest shards of life, and there is no other choice than to, inch by painful inch, regrow."

He suddenly felt frightened, and he was not sure why. A lump in his throat formed, hard. Caleb intertwined their fingers. "Are you going to take a new first name, as well?"

A moment of impossible lightness, of relief. He let out a long breath, and his shoulder sagged. Caleb did not quite smile at him, and yet it was enough, and wonderful, and felt like warm gold in his chest.

"Maybe when I think of a suitable one, but not for now," he said. Essek Widogast seemed properly mismatched. It would be inconvenient, to have to learn to answer to something else. Maybe after this adventure to Uthodurn. "I thought perhaps we would be - discrete about it. So that Jester and Beauregard aren't.... indiscrete."

Caleb chuckled, a quick breath. "That seems fair," he said. There was a pause, as he evidently gathered himself. "You know -- the person I was -- had --” A strange look came into his eye, distant and pained, and then he swallowed, and let it go, and Essek wished more than anything to ask. 

He didn’t. He took a breath and then watched Caleb put a shield back on. They were going adventuring now. He would learn everything about the shield and then he promised himself he would let Caleb feel safe putting it away. _You don’t have to float around us, man._

There was a rattle from above the staircase and Caleb gave his hand a squeeze before turning away. Beauregard appeared first, followed by Jester and Yasha. They were talking excitedly, and as they got closer it seemed like a story of a previous adventure in Uthodurn.

"Are we eating here or going somewhere else?" Yasha asked.

"Doesn't look like there's much breakfast here yet," Beauregard replied, "Maybe we'll find somewhere with real food."

"My momma said that she can be your momma if you need a new one, Essek," Jester said, taking the lead of them.

"I appreciate that," Essek said, smiling politely, "You're very lucky to have her."

"I know, isn't she great? it's the best to come back and see her every time. "

More sound from the steps and Fjord and Caduceus appeared, and then finally Veth, pulling her hair back from her face.

"We have to get your clothes, right?" Caduceus asked, and Essek nodded.

"And breakfast," Fjord added, "Then Caleb can woosh us off to Uthodorn?"

"I need bacon," Veth said, "We can't go somewhere without bacon."

"Bacon, clothes, and then whooshing sounds like a pretty good morning." Caleb stood up and began to walk out the door, and the rest of them, falling into line, followed them. Reaching into a demiplane, Essek put on his glasses as they stepped outside, and it was a lot less unpleasant. Jester made a delighted cheer.

The Uthodurn adventure they were discussing involved a woman that kept coming up - Reani, who Beauregard had slept with, apparently - breaking into a house, special cupcakes, and Caleb, apparently randomly, asking 'bread?' in a questionable tone of voice.

Fjord ordered them breakfast at the first tavern they saw, and Essek felt the eyes on him. The low murmurs. Another twist of anxiety pulsed in his chest. He thought of the dinner of the Lavish Chateau, how it had been like this. How many different inns would feel like this. It was his life. This was what Essek Widogast - did. Felt. 

Then Caleb shifted around him, and Caduceus moved closer, hiding him behind his bulk. Essek Widogast -- had people. Had them. He took a breath, and when the murmuring didn't stop, watch Veth reach for her crossbow and with incredible aim, ding a bolt into the wall next to one of the humans.

"I won't miss next time," she growled, and the humans stared at her, at Essek, at their food, and then put their heads together.

He swallowed the hysterical laugh, trying to make his heart stop racing. "I can disguise myself, if that would be - more convenient," he said, as they were served. The server didn't even seem to look at him, which was nice.

"There's no way we're making you pretend to be someone you aren't," Beauregard said, "And no one's going to win against all of us."

The thought made his chest hurt in a baffling way.

"Thank you, Beauregard," he said, taking a forkful of breakfast, which he only barely managed not to spit out. Unseasoned, overcooked, mashed together, with no texture.

"Not your favorite?" Caduceus asked, tilting his head, "You can try some of mine." He pushed over his plate of vegetables, and Essek tried that next.

"Baby's first inn breakfast," Veth said, fondly, "Don't worry, you'll get used to eating horrible crap in no time."

The vegetables were actually better, he found, and his expression was enough to make Caduceus smile. When they left the tavern, Veth was counting coins in an unfamiliar money purse that he was sure she hadn't had when they entered.

The tailor brightened when they knocked, throwing the door open.

"Essek!" they said, grabbing Essek's hand and yanking him in, "I worked all night for your clothes! You'll be the most fashionable drow there is! It’s a joke, but also it’s true, you know. I mean, I don’t know what the actual drow fashions are, but I just let myself have a little freedom because you’re of so many worlds, Rosohna and Nicodromas and --” they gestured to the Mighty Nein, behind him - “-- so! It can be anything! Come right away.”

He didn’t have much of a choice, what with how Veruthil then immediately dragged him into the shop, the rest of the Nein behind him. The shop, with it's windows mostly still closed, was a much nicer place to be than the bright daylight outside, once he snapped his wrist from Veruthil's hand.

"Come on!' Veruthil said, hurrying back, and Essek pushed the glasses up into his hair and let his eyes adjust to the room. They stood in dress form and gestured, wide, the tail adding a flourish. "Tada!"

The clothes were nice, he could see. It was an all-nighter sort of project, with the elegant designs that had been sewn into the overshirt and the jacket, and something non-traditional about the pants. It was certainly not anything Xorhassian in style, but it was not quite what the people in Nicodramas wore to the Lavish Chateau. He could see where the risks had been taken, because, he supposed, you could afford to take risks when you were dressing a drow, rather than a famous courtesan.

"I like those swirly designs in the sleeves," Yasha said.

"Essek's going to look the best out of all of us," Beauregard added, with some resentment he wasn't sure if she meant.

"You did amazing, Veru!" Jester said, and was appearing in front of him, giving the tailor a hug, "I knew you were the person to come to!"

"Well, you know, anything for the secret sapphire," they said, hugging her back, "And I really should be thanking you and your friends, because this isn't the sort of thing I'd get to do in my regular life, you know. Everyone's so boring about what they want, everyone always wants what the Marquis has, and it's not not very interesting to try and make that fun again, but a drow appearing, now that's fun and exciting--"

Veruthil was still talking, and Jester was nodding along, as Essek took another step forward. The clothes had a long cloak over them, dark, with grey threads sewn about it. It reminded him, in a way, of home; there was something dark about it, like those old streets he once haunted. It was long, easily dropping to his feet, and would cover him, the way he wanted.

"Get dressed!" Veruthil said, turning to gesture at him.

"Ah," he said, not quite startled, "Yes, I will." He gathered the clothes up and went into the changing room in the back.

It felt strange to discard the rags. In a way it was all he had left, of Theylss. The last thing they had given him - a gift. A strange gift, a punishment, really, but somehow the torn clothes too far, when he left them fall to the ground. Feeling ridiculous, he scooped up the clothes and dumped them into his demiplane. He could burn them later, at least.

The clothes did fit. He looked in the mirror and felt entirely, impossibly strange. He felt like an alien. It was worse than taking the shape of some other creature or person by far, for sure. That was just a disguise. But this elf in the mirror - his face, white hair, slim shoulders - this was him, and he was wearing these clothes. His clothes. The clothes of this person. This was what Essek Widogast wore, he decided, giving his reflection a firm nod. Essek Widogast kept longer sleeves with sewn designs in them. Essek Widogast wore a light undershirt with blue overshirt skillfully sewn with light thread.

At least, he thought with an achy relief, there was the cloak. It eased some or the tension in his chest, when he put it on. Like his mantle, it made him so much more shapeless. He hovered in it, just to check, feeling the familiar space under his feet. Oh, that was him, there, haughty.

 _No,_ he thought, and it hurt, a weird, solid block in his chest. _That person in the mirror is Theylss, and you - you are Widogast._

He stood back on the ground again. He kept the cloak on, though. It was too hard, at that moment, to be alone with his new self, and acknowledge everything about it. It was too hard to look at this person and how he dressed and agree that it was him.

There was a round of applause when he exited the dressing room, and a wolf-whistle from Veth. He swept the coak away and bowed. He could perform. That he could do, no matter who he was. He could be something that they clapped for - that was easy.

"Are you going to wear that cloak all the time?" Caduceus asked, "I'm worried you'll get it dirty or caught in something. Sometimes we have to wander through swamps and stuff. We were beneath a well in Astarius."

"Caleb's coat gets kind of disgusting but he keeps wearing it," Jester said, "Maybe because he's nostalgic for his really old disgusting coat."

"Caleb's coat is not the same," Beauregard said, "because it's not almost dragging across the floor. I mean, you're going to get that caught in like, brambles or something. And it's definitely going to get just soaked if we actually have to go into the mountain that Uthodurn's in."

Essek carefully controlled the stare he wanted to make at them. He knew how silly it would look, to complain, when they had already given him so much. They were taking him on his adventure, they had rescued him at great cost, they had introduced him to their pasts and families. Caleb had given him his name.

But to think that he would so quickly be that person in these clothes --

"I think we can handle a slightly soggy coat hem," Caleb said, taking in his mantle, "The elf has a look he likes to maintain, and we can figure out the functionality of it when we're nearer to whatever horror awaits us next." 

"I mean, I really don't want to have to save him again from an evil bramble bush," Beauregard added, "That's on you, Caleb." 

"In case an evil bramble bush grabs onto Essek's coat, I will rescue him," Caleb said. 

"I won't wear it," Essek said, and then steadying himself, began to slide the coat off his shoulders and let it hang over his arm. He turned to Veruthil, who was had been watching the whole exchange. "Do you have something less likely to be caught?" 

The tailor took the coat back and looked him over, Essek carefully kept the longing out of his eyes, watching them disappear into the back of the store. He felt odd again, like that person in the mirror. He felt like someone else, a person maybe he wasn't ready to be yet, but here he was. He hadn't asked for -- any of this. 

Here he was. He felt vulnerable. Exposed. Like new skin. 

It seemed unfair, and worse to seem a burden in any way. He had no idea what sort of troubles awaited them. They had fought dragons and Betrayer champions and been beneath Bazzoxan. Beauregard wanted his clothing to be functional. 

"I mean, it is a really cool shirt, Essek," Jester said, "It's not like it's ugly to show off or anything." 

That isn't the point, he could have said, and didn't. 

Veruthil appeared with a smaller coat, more like the outfits of the populace of Nicodramas. They offered it to him. 

"The person I made this for is several weeks late, so, well, and you're here, and it does match your outfit, although it is a little traditional, and it's not what i would have made for you, but it's what I have now, if you adventurers are off on some adventure. THe material is very strong, though, that was a request, so if you are going to, uh, well, I'm not sure, then it should help, but--" 

"I'm sure it will be fine," he said, quick, pulling it on. It was just a little large, the proportions just a little off. Made for a human, he supposed, but it was comfortable enough. Not so covering. Not so complete. Not anything like his old mantle, and yet. 

"It will do quite handily," he said, and then buttoned the clasps closed. With a twitch of his fingers, he reached into the demiplane and brought out his money pouch, "I hope there is a fair price, for such quality work on a tight deadline." 

He was withdrawing money before Veruthil named a price, and left it in the tabaxi's hands with wide eyes. Then the money purse disappeared again, and he turned. The sooner he was away from the coat he wanted, the better. 

"Shall we depart?" he asked. 

Caleb was watching him, careful. 

"Where should we do the circle?" Fjord asked, "Here? Lavish Chateau? A back alley, our favorite place?" 

"It's not really a Mighty Nein teleportation unless we're doing it in a back alley," Veth said. Her and Fjord turned started looking down the streets they passed.

"You know, Essek," Jester said, appearing next to him, “Fjord’s actually the captain of the Ball Eater. He has his own ship and everything.” 

Essek turned and looked at her. He waited for what was sure to be more and kept his soft _uh oh_ to himself. 

“So,” Jester said, “If you wanted to marry Caleb, you’d have to do it before we left.” 

The next thing Essek felt was a large hand fisted in the back of his clothes and the smell of the street rushing up to him, and then quite suddenly stopping. 

“Jester,” Caleb hissed, somewhere. 

Broad hands, black and gray and white, were putting Essek on his feet. The hands remained, which he was very happy about. He was not sure his feet would hold him.

Marry…. Caleb? 

“I think that can wait, but thank you, Jester,” he said, finally. 

“Found a good alley!” Veth said, appearing in front of them, “We ready to go?” 

“Show me,” Caleb said. 

“Yes,” Essek agreed, freeing himself from the pale hands, standing straighter. He took a step to stand next to Caleb and took a deep breath. He was not going to think about marrying Caleb right now. There were many elaborate rituals which he could not even think to get into, and besides that --- _marrying_. 

Caleb looked at him. Layers and layers protected what he was actually thinking. Essek longed in impossible ways to take those layers down.Caleb said, “I suppose when you teleport you don’t do so in a back alley.” 

“I do now,” he said. He watched Caleb draw the circles on the floor, his red hair in the faint breeze, the pale skin, his Xhorhassian clothes. This man who was so much like him. Who shared his name, now. 

“Well, the Ball Eater be here whenever you're ready!” Jester said, and the runes flared to life.


End file.
